The Many Deaths of Harry Potter
by Harry O'Henth
Summary: Harry was always destined to gather the Deathly Hallows, from the moment the killing curse kissed his skin as a child. It is only right that Death should take a special interest in the one that would one day wield his talismans.
1. Prologue

Prologue

The first time Harry Potter saw his guardian he had been laying on his back in the utter dark, listening to the sound of his heart struggling weakly to beat in his chest. It was hard to tell if he was asleep or awake, but he remembered blinking once, slowly, and seeing him there, leaning over his sickly form. The man's face was pale and aristocratic, with neatly defined bones and flawless skin, and his eyes were impossibly dark and deep, two bottomless pools of shadow. Harry gasped, weakly, but that was the extent of his reaction, for thirst stifled his voice and hunger sapped his strength.

He didn't know how long it had been since Uncle Vernon had cast him into the dark. Eventually they would have to open the cupboard if only to deal with the stench; Harry had heard Petunia complaining already, but Vernon was still vexed and reluctant to release his nephew. At this point, Harry could hardly remember what it was that he had done to incur his uncle's wrath. It didn't really matter.

Harry couldn't speak, but this strange, impossible figure gave him a soft smile and laid a hand with long, slender fingers on his chest, above his clenching heart. It was a cold, soothing touch that seeped through his bones and relaxed the tension that had risen in his shoulders.

"They are pitiful, are they not?" the man had asked, quietly. His voice was clear and articulate, with an indecipherable accent and a slow tempo. "Jealous, fearful, pathetic creatures. Do not hate them, Harry Potter, for they are not worth even your scorn."

The pangs of hunger and the dry rasp in Harry's throat subsided as the being which Harry could only assume was an angel lightly brushed his fingers across Harry's pallid skin.

"I am no angel, my fated child," the man said, blinking slowly. His hand came to rest on the side of Harry's face, and the cold sent gooseflesh cascading down Harry's neck. "I am the relief for those who are dying, the guide for the lost and the redeemer of the broken. Take heart, my child, for it is not your time." A this, the man gave him a gentle smile, and the pangs of hunger that plagued Harry seemed to melt away to nothing. "You shall see me again."

Against his will, Harry's eyes became heavy and consciousness slipped from his grasp, even as he reached up to hold the dark figure's fingers against his face.

He was awakened by Vernon hauling him bodily from the cupboard and throwing him into the bath. Petunia, looking unnaturally pale and shaky, gave him a peanut butter sandwich and a tall glass of milk, and Harry could only wonder what she had seen that had shaken her so deeply.

When he saw himself in the mirror, he knew.

* * *

"Who are you?" the boy asked, staring intently at nothing. Chaos had erupted in the kitchen of Number 4 Privet Drive when Vernon Dursley reached out to take his nephew by the hair, only to hit the ground with tremendous force, shaking the windows and rattling the plates on the table. Petunia had screamed, Dudley had worked his jaw soundlessly, but Harry hardly blinked, gazing intently at the dark, ethereal figure that had appeared moments before the man had collapsed. The gigantic, walrus of a man was gasping and clutching at his chest, and his dark haired, skeletal nephew paid him nary a sidelong glance.

The ghostly image peered at him through a darkened hood. Although the kitchen was well-lit, shadows played deeply around the man's familiar pale skin. Harry stepped back as Petunia rushed past him, grasping the phone like a lifeline and barking hysterically into the receiver. Torn between escaping the mayhem and staying to have his question answered, he hesitated at the threshold, then turned and ducked into the sitting room. He hadn't expected the ghost to appear before him, much closer this time, and his breath caught in his throat.

He recognized that face.

"I am Death," the man said, although Harry knew at once that this was not a man at all, but something beyond mere flesh and blood. Beyond time itself.

"I know you," Harry said quietly, and at once Death's form shifted, becoming solid before his eyes. His dark black cloaks remained, but his hood fell, revealing high, aristocratic features and black, featureless eyes.

"Yes," said the primordial being, reaching out his hand to brush his fingers against the scar on Harry's forehead. The boy shuddered and felt pain lance through his skull at the place where those fingers touched his skin. "He who has escaped my embrace, and he who reviles my existence. Truly, I say to you, your life belongs to me. I should only reach out to take it…"

His hand passed into Harry's chest, and the boy felt numb. His limbs had frozen stiff, and he could only blink in surprise as his heart beat in the grasp of Death. Then, Death withdrew from him with a wan smile, dragging his fingers across Harry's skin and sending gooseflesh across his trembling body. He fell to his knees the moment Death's hand left him.

"Ah, but you knew that already," Death said softly. "Rise, child."

Harry regained his feet immediately, slightly unsteady. "You…killed Uncle Vernon."

"Vernon killed Vernon, child," Death corrected him, kneeling so that they were face to face. "I only chose the time of his passing. If it was necessary, which I assure you it was, then it is better that it was done quickly, before he laid his hands upon you once more."

"I don't understand," Harry said, frowning. The expression was especially striking on his deathly visage, but Death only smiled.

"He made his choice," was all the pale being said. "I have a vision for you, fated child. Do you want to hear it?"

Harry shrugged, hugging himself about the midsection with his gangly arms.

"There are wretched creatures in this world. Ghastly, corrupted things which exist in a tortured imitation of Life. Beings which have eschewed my embrace. One such creature gave you your scar and killed your parents. You could help me protect others from the same," Death elaborated, gazing at him intently.

"Couldn't you simply take them?"

Death chuckled. "I cannot violate the sovereign will of any soul, no matter how ruined it might be. In the past, I have raised judges and champions to enact my will on Earth."

"I am just a freak." Harry replied, looking away and gnawing his bottom lip. He started when Death's cold fingers grasped him gently by the chin and directed his face so that their eyes met.

"I care for you, my child," Death whispered, and his eyes seemed to swallow Harry's thoughts. "Serve as my mortal instrument and I will grant you power beyond your human imagination. I have no need for heroes who are great of their own power; with faith and dedication even the lowliest of Man can serve me well."

It seemed, in this moment, that there was no choice. Harry could hardly think, let alone articulate a refusal. And he didn't know if he wanted to refuse, anyway.

"What do I have to do?" he found himself saying.

Death smiled, a true expression, and Harry found himself flush with delight. "That is enough. Remember this as a covenant between us, and know that I am with you."

Then, he was gone, and Harry listened to the sirens of the ambulance as it screamed down Privet Drive, arriving much too late to save Vernon Dursley from his heart attack.


	2. Part 1 Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The inconspicuous parchment that had started the altercation in the kitchen had been ruined during Vernon's rage, and Harry half expected that to be the end of the matter. For several days, the subdued atmosphere of Number Four allowed Harry a measure of peace, as neither Petunia nor Dudley seemed to have the energy to concern themselves with him. He stayed out of their way, knowing that they blamed him entirely for Vernon's untimely demise and unwilling to risk their wrath.

As it turned out, the matter had not been put to rest. Harry had just finished breakfast, setting the table and taking some morsels back to his cupboard while Petunia and Dudley picked reluctantly at their food. They cast the occasional glance at the empty chair which seemed so insistent at the table. There, a flowered place-mat sat perfectly undisturbed, with expensive china and immaculate silverware upon it. It was an unfamiliar and poignant absence.

His hand froze inches from the door of his cupboard as three sharp knocks resounded upon the front door. He glanced to the kitchen, and saw a surprised, uncertain expression on Petunia's face. Her first reaction, undoubtedly, had been to call for her husband, but he was gone, and for a moment the house was frozen with indecision. Then, another knock shattered the silence, and Petunia rose stiffly to answer it.

Harry slipped into his cupboard and closed the door, listening idly and quickly working his way through his meager breakfast.

"Good morning," Petunia said. "Is there something I can do for you, Madam…"

"McGonagall," came the reply. The voice evoked the image of a rather austere woman, for it was both articulate and brusque. "I am the deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Your nephew, Harry Potter, did not respond to the invitation which was sent on the fifteenth."

"Oh," Petunia said, which was about the same thing that Harry was thinking. There was an extended period of awkward silence, during which Harry strained to hear what was happening. He even stopped his ravenous attack on the breakfast plate. He could just picture his aunt turning up her nose and sneering at the strange visitor, a scathing dismissal on her lips.

"Come in."

He blinked.

"Ah, thank you. I do have the right address?" the woman, McGonagall asked. The door closed, and Harry heard his aunt ushering the visitor to the sitting room. He couldn't hear what they were saying beyond indecipherable murmurs, until Petunia raised her voice.

"Harry!"

It was the first time that she had used his name in a long time. Moving quickly, Harry set his plate aside and joined them in the sitting room, brushing bread crumbs from his shirt and smacking his lips. His estimation of the deputy headmistress had been mostly correct; she was a tall, aged woman with pale skin and round glasses. Her hair, the color of bark, was tied up in a bun, held with a long, carved wooden pin. She was wearing some sort of red and gold dress, sewn from a sturdy gray fabric and tied with a lion-shaped brooch.

She caught sight of him as he entered the room, and the expression on her face was the perfect image of discomfort. Surprise, fury, and concern warred in her eyes, and she seemed at a loss for words until he was standing beside the chair where his aunt was sitting, wringing her hands in her lap.

"Mr. Potter?" McGonagall questioned, looking first to Petunia and then directly at Harry himself.

Harry glanced at his aunt, and saw her furtively gesturing for him to reply. "Yes, ma'am."

McGonagall cleared her throat and appeared to regain some of her composure when he spoke. "Did you receive a letter a few days ago?"

"Yes, ma'am," Harry replied, at the same time as Petunia saying, "No, he didn't." he glanced at her, half expecting a reprimand for speaking out of turn, and saw only a defeated expression.

"I see. Well, did you read it?"

Harry shook his head, glancing at his aunt and wringing his hands together. She sighed. "My husband disposed of the letter. He thought it was a prank."

"Surely you were expecting us to contact you?" McGonagall asked. "Your sister attended Hogwarts, after all."

Harry blinked, and a heavy silence settled in the sitting room.

"Well, it is no matter," the deputy headmistress continued, fidgeting in her seat. "I can discuss the contents with Harry now, if that's alright."

Her tone made it sound as if it wasn't as much of a request as the words might have implied. Petunia nodded and beat a hasty retreat. The moment she was gone, Harry regarded the deputy headmistress levelly. He didn't know what to think of this situation.

"My mother was a witch," he stated slowly. It was a question phrased in the manner that Harry had learned quickly after Vernon grew weary of his curiosity. Direct inquiries were often met unfavorably, so it was better to make simple observations and allow others to correct them.

"That's right, Mr. Potter. Why don't you sit down? I'm afraid we have much to discuss," McGonagall gestured to the chair that Petunia had vacated. Harry winced, knowing that he would face a reprimand for sitting on the furniture later, should Petunia catch sight of him. Still, he didn't want to anger the deputy headmistress either, so he sat, splaying his long fingers across his knees and keeping his back straight. "I assume you know about Hogwarts."

"I'm sorry," Harry said when she paused, and she frowned.

"Didn't your aunt tell you about your parents?"

Harry shrugged. "They died in an auto accident," he explained, even if Death had told him otherwise. His words caused the woman's face to contort in displeasure, and he bit down on his tongue.

" _That_ is a lie," she ground out, with clearly forced calm. "James and Lily Potter died courageously, in opposition to a vile man. Their sacrifice ultimately led to the end of a bloody insurrection, and brought peace to Britain."

"I didn't know," Harry replied, which wasn't entirely false. He wondered if this "vile man" was the same that Death had mentioned. "Am I a wizard, then?"

McGonagall nodded, and gave him a reassuring smile. It didn't little to comfort him; adults often lied with their expressions. "That is why I am here. Wizards and witches in Britain must attend Hogwarts until they achieve their Ordinary Wizarding Levels. This is a precaution to ensure that there are no accidental discharges of magic among the general population. The letter you should have received contained your supplies list and a brief introduction to the magical world."

When he nodded, she raised an eyebrow. "You seem remarkably accepting of the existence of magic, considering that your aunt told you nothing," she said. Harry recognized the question and shrugged.

"I have always been…" he hesitated on the word 'freakish' and settled for "different. It explains a lot of things."

"I see. How do you mean?" McGonagall asked, seeming genuinely curious.

Harry shrugged. "My eyes are an unnatural color," he said, recalling the description his teachers had used. "I broke a window once, but I never touched it."

He didn't mention many of the other things. Like Death. Or the fact that his cuts and bruises healed overnight. Or the snakes in the garden. What he had said seemed to satisfy the deputy headmistress, however, and she gave him another smile.

"Yes, you have your mother's eyes. Hers were never quite so bright," she said. "Things like that are the result of accidental magic. Your magic will react in emotional or stressful situations. These things are perfectly natural, but they can be dangerous. The broken window is an example of something that could have gone badly. Do you want to learn to control your magic?"

Harry nodded, thinking of the power that Death had promised him. "What kinds of things will I learn?" he asked, before he could catch himself. He blinked, inwardly cursing his curiosity, but McGonagall did not appear irritated by his question.

She drew the hairpin from her bun, but it didn't fall apart. That, alone, might have been magic, but what she did after that was more blatant. With a wave of her hand and a whisper, the wooden coffee table twisted into a stone gargoyle, then spread its wings, baring considerable teeth. Harry stared, entranced, as it shifted again, becoming a large, glass sphere, before returning to its original form.

"That was a demonstration of transfiguration," McGonagall said. Harry nodded and reached out to touch the table, half expecting it to feel like stone. When he didn't say anything, she continued her demonstrations, casting another spell. This time, flower petals rained down from the ceiling in lazy spirals. "Charms," she said, grinning at his dumbfounded expression.

Once the petals were dispelled, she returned her pin to her hair. "There are other subjects. Divination, Ancient Runes, Potions, Astrology, History. The curriculum is quite exhaustive at Hogwarts. You have to decide if you'd like to attend, or if we should discuss alternatives. All magical children must have some form of instruction."

Harry chewed his tongue and glanced toward the kitchen. "I want to," he said, quietly. "But I don't know if I can."

"That's excellent!" McGonagall said. "All you have to do is procure your school supplies and get yourself to Kings Cross Station, platform nine and three quarters by ten o'clock on the first of September. If you'd like, we can go shopping for your supplies now."

"I don't have any money," Harry said, shaking his head. When he looked back at the deputy headmistress, he saw a familiar shadow lurking beside her, and his eyes widened. Death lifted a slender finger to his lips, and Harry fidgeted restlessly.

He didn't know what to think of this woman, but he was certain that he didn't want to watch her die.

"Nonsense!" McGonagall declared, oblivious to the specter looming over her shoulder. "Your parents will have left you something for your education. Allow me to discuss the matter with your aunt and we can be on our way."

Harry knew it was wiser not to argue with adults when they were set in their ways, and watched her step into the kitchen. The moment she was gone he returned his attention to the ghostly apparition which drew nearer to him in the empty sitting room.

"Magic will serve you well. It is a gift," Death told him. "There are many things that I can teach you, but you must promise me two things. They will be your first tasks as my hand on Earth."

Harry gave a tentative smile and waited.

"Learn everything that you can about magic. There are people who would withhold information from you; you must not allow them to succeed. I will teach you what I can to assist you," Death elaborated. "I also want you to work with a magical healer as soon as you can. Become strong. Can you do these things?"

"Yes," Harry replied aloud.

"Are you ready?" McGonagall asked, and Harry jumped, watching from the corner of his eyes as Death faded into shadow and tendrils of smoke. He nodded and followed McGonagall to the entrance hall, where she stood, affixing a pointed hat atop her head.

"This may feel unpleasant," she said, taking his hand in her own. Harry saw her hesitate, and then the world twisted away in a cyclone of bright color. He felt his chest compress, and his breath rushed from his lips, immediately forming icy fog. Then, his feet touched down and a sharp _crack_ buffeted his ears. He swayed, coughed, and gripped the older woman's hand tightly.

"Take deep breaths," she advised, and Harry recovered himself in short order. Glancing around, he saw that they were standing side by side in a side street of a city.

"What was that?" he asked, releasing her hand and briskly rubbing his palms together. He eyed the woman closely, watching for any signs of irritation. He had already decided he was going to push his luck with questions, it only remained to be seen how long the deputy headmistress would tolerate him.

"That, Mr. Potter, was a means of magical transportation known as apparition," she said, looking pleased. "It can be used to travel short to intermediate distances very quickly. For long distance travel, another method of travel, known as a portkey, is recommended, especially if there are no convenient locations to stop off in between you and your destination."

Harry filed away the terms apparition and portkey for later. "Where are we?"

"This is London," McGonagall answered. "Come along, now. The entrance to Diagon Alley is nearby."

* * *

Harry was returned to Number Four Privet drive at sunset, thoroughly pleased and entirely exhausted. He carried with him two trunks and a caged owl, and he wore simple black robes with a gray tunic and a white sash about his waist. He had opted for a hood instead of a pointed hat; it felt too silly for him to play into the children's stories so perfectly, and McGonagall had insisted that he wear his robes for the rest of their shopping.

Harry was confused by the professor. She had treated him kindly, indulging his incessant questions and advising him on his supplies, but he could feel her eyes watching him when she thought he wasn't paying attention. She probably thought him strange, which wasn't surprising. She had been insistent that he eat a large meal at lunch and dinner, and the shopping had really taken much longer than strictly necessary.

It was good. For the first time in his life, Harry had sufficient motivation to apply himself to the task at hand, and the more time he spent with Professor McGonagall, the more he learned about the strange new world into which he had been inducted.

He appreciated the food well enough, but no one had ever paid him much attention before, and it confused him. This was why he was pleased to discover the house empty upon his return, immediately storing his things and hiding away in the cupboard to think.

Death was there, and although the being's facial expressions were largely unreadable, Harry could tell that his master was pleased. The moment the thought tickled his mind, Death pinned him with an unfathomable stare.

"Do you call me Master?" he asked.

Harry shrugged. The word had fit nicely in his thoughts. "You said that my soul was yours."

"That much is true," Death agreed. "But that does not make me your master. The things that master you, Harry, are determined strictly by you. Whatever or whomever you choose to serve becomes your master."

"I…don't I serve you?" Harry asked, suddenly uncertain. "I thought…"

"Some people would call me a harsh master," Death mused. His hand rested on Harry's knee and the cool sensation reassured the boy.

"They don't know you," Harry replied quietly, thinking of the time that Death had visited him as he starved.

"Truth spoken by a child," Death murmured. "But do not presume yourself better informed than they."

"You said that you would care for me," Harry spoke his thoughts aloud "Serving you pays the debt."

"There is no debt, child," Death whispered.

Harry shrugged, feeling more confident. "If I get to choose my master, then I choose you."

The pale visage of his companion seemed sad, and Death's hand was cooler than usual against his cheek. "Truly, even though you swear yourself to me, I am not your master. I have no need for servants or binding oaths like those that men bandy among themselves. Faith and dedication bind more surely than any vow, no matter how solemnly given."

Harry frowned, and knew that he would consider Death his master, regardless of the being's words.

"I saw the books that you bought," Death said, changing the subject with an impassive expression. "You made a remarkable selection despite your lack of experience. I am proud of you. All that remains is diligent study."

"Will you help me?" Harry asked hesitantly, opening his trunk. Living under the weight of Vernon's hatred had made Harry tentative, but he knew that he couldn't complete the task that Death had given him by himself.

There were soft magical lights on the inside of the trunk that gently bloomed to life, allowing him to find one of the books titled _Simple Serviceable Spells._

Death nodded solemnly. "Of course. A good master cares for his servants, after all."


	3. Part 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Hogwarts Express was long and filled with empty compartments. The students were interspersed sporadically within it, but it was immediately apparent that it had been designed to carry many more than its current passengers. Harry knew why.

From his books, he had learned about the war with Voldemort. It was a easier to read about, and harder to come face to face with the grim results of that brutal campaign. The Wizarding world would bear the scars of Voldemort's violence for decades to come. Harry found the reminder of the staggering death toll sobering, and he spent the journey looking through the window at the passing countryside.

"He was a great man," Death said, referring to the butcher that had set his cleaver to Britain, and Harry stared uncomprehending.

"How can you say that?" Harry asked. "He was a monster."

"He is," Death agreed. "But he was not always so. Did you think that he was born with hatred in his heart?"

Chewing his lip, Harry shook his head.

"All men have evil within them. Some, like Tom, allow it to rule them completely. I did not know him as I know you," Death continued, "but with every life he took, he revealed more of himself to me. He was once young and full of hope, and he was blessed with a keen mind and strong magic. His life is a tragedy. Truly, there is a tragedy in the past of every villain."

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"Riddle wanted to change the world," Death replied, softly. "But he didn't have the power, so he spent his life searching for it. To make his vision for the world possible. His desire for power consumed him. Piece by piece, he gave himself over to greater evils. Eventually, they were all that remained, and even the very thing which had first set him onto the path was forgotten. Some forms of magic are insidious in this way; they whisper to you and twist your mind until nothing else matters but the twisted desires of demons, and by that time, you won't even care."

Harry nodded slowly, hearing the warning in his master's voice. Just as he was about to speak, a knock sounded on his compartment door and Death disappeared. A young girl with wild, bushy hair and a sandy-haired boy with round cheeks peered into the compartment.

"Hello," she said, waving. "Have you seen a toad? My friend lost track of his familiar."

"No," Harry replied, shrugging. "Sorry."

"That's alright," the girl said quickly. Her eyes lingered on the dark-haired boy for a moment, and Harry knew she found him…disconcerting. "Come, Neville, we'll find him yet."

The boy, Neville, met Harry's eyes and quickly nodded his head, breaking his gaze to look uselessly down the carriage. After a brief pause, the girl closed the door and Harry sighed, returning his attention to the vibrant green landscape, thinking of the things that Death had said.

* * *

Harry made people uncomfortable. It had been the same way in primary school, and there was no reason for it to change now. Magical people might be more accustomed to outlandish things, but even they had preconceived notions of normality. Notions which Harry didn't match. He didn't know if it was the color of his eyes or his gaunt visage or his pale skin. The end result was the same.

Conversation in the boat that he shared with three other first-years was stilted and defined entirely by the odd glances that the other three occupants continually sent his way. Harry figured they probably thought they were being inconspicuous, but it was obvious that they found him strange. He would have been bothered by it if the feeling was not entirely mutual.

Children were easier to understand than adults, but that didn't make it a simple thing by any stretch of the imagination.

The inane conversation about Hogwarts Houses and quidditch continued. Harry found himself entranced by the subtle ripples in the dark lake-water, and he wondered if there was anything strange living in the shadowed depths below. A shudder danced down his spine, and he thought he saw a silhouette moving beneath the water, but it could have been the moonlight dancing between the ripples in the lake.

The castle which towered above the black lake seemed imposing and dangerous. Its battlements spoke of terror, and Harry could easily envision great sieges taking place around it. He imagined the flagstones were stained with the blood of a thousand would-be conquerors, and he wondered what those battles might have looked like.

The students were herded like sheep into the great hall. Long tables with engraved benches were situated on either side of an aisle under the evening sky. At the front of the room, beneath a stone dome with a perfect image of the sky displayed upon it, a raised dais with another table for the teachers flanked a single chair with a tattered old hat sitting upon it.

The rest of the students were seated, watching the first-years as they followed Deputy Headmistress McGonagall to the front of the room. It was then that Headmaster Dumbledore stood and began his speech.

Harry's eyes fell to the old man's belt, where a long, dark wand was tucked beside his beard. Something about that innocuous thing was strangely familiar, and it made the palms of Harry's hands itch restlessly.

"Ah," Death whispered, and Harry suddenly noticed that the specter was beside him. Perhaps he had been there all along, and only now could Harry see him. "I see you have noticed Antioch's Bane."

Curious, but unwilling to appear insane to his peers, Harry held his tongue and settled for a simple questioning glance.

"Look up the story of the Peverell brothers."

Dumbledore concluded his speech, and the hat on the chair began to sing. While a good portion of the first-years were making exclamations about this, Harry, who conversed with an invisible being on a regular basis, wondered idly when they would be allowed to eat.

The Sorting Ceremony began with a boy named Raymond Butler, who was sorted into Hufflepuff. As children mounted the seat and placed the hat on their heads, the excitable bit of fabric barked out the name of their house, usually as soon as it touched down. Harry's curiosity was reaching a boiling point when his name was finally called, and so he had not anticipated the reaction of the student body to the simple words:

"Potter, Harry."

Silence immediately settled over the entire hall like a thick blanket. Almost entirely of its own accord, Harry's body began to walk forward, but his mind was still stunned by the reaction his name had caused. Then the whispers began, rising and falling in waves. They reached his ears in a jumble of incomprehensible sound, but he knew by looking at the faces of the staff that his usual first impression was warring quite magnificently with whatever drivel had been printed about the Boy-Who-Lived.

From the few paragraphs he had read, it seemed that wizards everywhere believed him to be a dashing young hero, proficient in all forms of battle-magic, bearing his scar proudly like a badge of honor. An adventurer of the highest-caliber, he spent his days plumbing the depths of the Earth's shadows, seeking out evil in all its forms to destroy it. Perhaps he would swoop in at night to save the weak and helpless from their troubles.

He despised every last article that had been printed to that theme, but there was nothing that could be done for eleven years of unchecked libel. He mused that it must be quite the shock for the other students to now be confronted with _reality_ when all that they had known about him to this point had been little more than the wild imaginings of the worst authors in Britain _._

Sitting down, he placed the hat on his head, allowing the brim to fall down over his eyes to blot out the sea of speculative gazes directed towards him. He expected a shout and received silence.

"Hmm," said a voice. Harry merely blinked and didn't bother replying. "Now, most students would be surprised to find a hat speaking in their thoughts."

Harry shrugged. That didn't stop him from wondering just how, exactly, the hat was capable of its remarkable feats. It didn't have a brain, did it?

Something told him it had to do with soul magic—that esoteric branch of magic that was only mentioned obliquely in the texts that he had scoured so far.

"What a keen intuition for magic," the hat admired. "And a voracious appetite for books. But it is not the desire of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but rather a sort of fearful devotion."

"Remarkably loyal. At least, to one. But little understanding of honor."

"A burning desire for power…"

The hat continued to ruminate for some time before remarking blithely, "You know; most people are really very simple. Well, I suppose I should enjoy the challenge." Harry sighed.

Harry sat in silence, counting the seconds. Two minutes later, the hat wriggled atop his head. "Slytherin!"

At once, he removed the hat and stood up, immediately confronted by a hall of absolutely stunned faces. Some small part of him was greatly pleased to see it, especially enjoying the expressions of personal insult which graced the features of some of the older students. It was as if his sorting had been entirely planned to spit on their preconceived notions of their boy-hero.

The house of the ambitious. Harry nodded and set the hat down on the chair. Considering his current life-goal included the murder of the world's most powerful dark wizard, it seemed especially apt. He dismounted the dais and joined the Slytherin table, watching his robes transform from neutral gray to black, silver and green.

Looking at the array of hostile, confused, and dismissive faces around him, Harry found himself right at home.


	4. Part 1 Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Excuse me," a small voice interrupted Madam Pomfrey's monotonous task, and she glanced to the side to see Harry Potter himself standing framed in the doorway. He said, "This is the hospital wing." She wondered if he enjoyed stating the obvious or if he was asking a question.

She wasn't entirely sure what she expected the Boy-Who-Lived to be like, but the boy that stood before her was absolutely not it. He was small for his age, and his robes seemed to hang from his skeletal frame like curtains. His face closely resembled a skull, for its pale complexion and somewhat protruding bones. From the sunken sockets of his skull, two brightly glinting emerald lights peered at her, surrounded by insistent shadows.

She had the same sort of unease that one felt when attending an open casket funeral, looking down at the dead man where he laid.

"Yes," she replied, just in case it really had been a question. "Is there something I can do for you?"

He nodded and stepped inside. His large, bright eyes darted to the side, and she followed them, but saw nothing. His hands were bunched up in front of him, and it looked like he was physically pained by something. Finally, he closed his eyes, and Madam Pomfrey saw a complete transformation take place. When he spoke again, it was with measured consideration. "I am in poor health, and I was hoping that you might be able to help me."

"Of course!" she said. Gesturing to the hospital bed, "I haven't finished unpacking, but take a seat there and we'll see what I can do."

Once he was seated, she drew her wand. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Well," he hesitated. "I don't really know."

Madam Pomfrey could see at least three things that might have been wrong with the boy, and that was without the use of magic. Pursing her lips, she began.

She performed a basic diagnostic charm and noticed his eyes narrow slightly as various colors sprang into existence between them, dancing in the air like snow caught in a brisk winter gale. Her breath hitched as she started to interpret the storm of light, and she cut off her spell jerkily.

"Mr. Potter," she began, halting suddenly and taking a deep breath. "Have you informed anyone of your situation?"

"What do you mean?" He appeared confused, though she was certain that he knew what she was referring to.

She frowned and shook her head. "To start, it appears as if you have been chronically underfed and near starvation several times in your past. How did this happen?"

Harry nodded carefully. Once again, his eyes darted off to something behind her, and Madam Pomfrey stifled the urge to find out what he was looking at. "My uncle disliked me, ma'am."

"He purposefully neglected you?" she asked, appalled.

Harry winced. "He thought that I was a freak because of accidental magic," he explained. "My aunt was jealous of magic and allowed him to indulge his hatred."

Stricken by these words spoken by a young child, Madam Pomfrey lowered her wand and gazed seriously into his eyes. "Have you ever asked for help?"

"No, ma'am," he said, seeming somewhat regretful. "At the time, I had no reason to suspect that other adults would care."

Madam Pomfrey had nothing to say to that. "You should know that I am bound by my oaths to report this to Child Services."

Harry nodded. "It doesn't matter. Vernon is dead."

Stunned, she could only begin to think of a question before the boy continued, speaking in a rush.

"My letter came and he tried to grab me, but he…" at this, he choked and winced. "He had a heart attack. I think he died on the way to the hospital."

Setting aside the fact that Harry Potter might have killed a man with accidental magic, Madam Pomfrey raised her wand. "Oh," was all she could think to say. "I still have to make a report. In the meantime, I can set you up with a series of potions and a diet. I'm afraid to say that prolonged malnutrition can negatively affect your magical core."

She caught herself before she could continue, fearing that she had startled her patient. Harry was only nodding solemnly at her revelation however, and his eyes were focused on a point in space above her shoulder. She lamented the sorts of trials that he must have endured for him to become jaded at the age of eleven.

"I want to be strong," Harry said suddenly. His eyes focused on her suddenly, and she felt as if they were piercing straight through her. "Can you give me advice about that as well?"

Beginning the motions for a more complex diagnostic spell, she merely nodded. The boy relaxed visibly, and a smile graced his pale features.

* * *

"Mr. Potter," a low, aristocratic voice interrupted Harry's reading. He glanced up from his book to see the inscrutable features of his head of house.

The Hogwarts library had proven to be filled with an endless supply of knowledge, and Harry had begun scouring as many texts as he could find in the few days that remained before the start of classes. It was mostly deserted, since there were no assignments to be done, and it allowed Harry to escape from the eyes of his peers in Slytherin.

"Yes, professor?"

Snape pursed his lips. "The headmaster wishes to meet with you in his office. As your head of house, I shall accompany you."

Closing his book, Harry stowed it in the pocket of his robes and stood. He followed Professor Snape out of the library, and was expecting to walk in silence. The man had not made any attempts to hide his disdain for Harry, if his continual glares were any indication of his opinions.

"I have received an order for a variety of potions from Madam Pomfrey," Snape said suddenly. Harry glanced at the man and shrugged.

"What kind of potions, sir?"

Snape stopped and put his hand on Harry's shoulder. It felt heavy and Harry stepped back immediately, forcing his professor to relinquish his hold. "Do not think me a fool," he warned lowly. "I know that they are for you."

"They are," Harry affirmed, raising his chin. He saw Death looming over Snape's shoulder and knew that nothing could harm him.

Snape sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I wanted to tell you that they will be ready by the time classes start."

With that, he continued on his way. Harry frowned but followed after the man, entirely confused.

The Headmaster's office was guarded by a gargoyle, but the magical construct moved aside at the mention of a ginger snap, which must have been a passphrase of some kind. The interior resembled a library as much as the office of a school administrator, so full it was with books and shelves. There were baubles of various kinds, spinning metal rods and twirling filaments. Sitting in a high-backed chair with a star-spangled hat, the headmaster scribbled away with a quill upon a curling bit of parchment.

"Ah, Harry," the man exclaimed, setting aside his quill. "Please, sit down. Thank you, Severus."

"As his head of house, I believe that I should stay," Professor Snape interjected. Dumbledore slid his half-moon glasses down his nose, glancing over their rim to peer at his employee.

"This is not a formal occasion," the headmaster argued. "I would hate to keep you from your preparations."

Snape scowled and departed from the room. The headmaster appeared somewhat confused, and Harry was glad that he was not the only one who did not understand that professor.

"Madam Pomfrey informed me of a rather distressing situation," he began, only to pause and slide a jar with little yellow candies inside across the desk. "Lemon drop?"

"No, thank you."

"Well, as I was saying, she informed me of the situation with your relatives," the headmaster continued, and Harry frowned. "I am most distressed to discover that you were not well treated."

"Sir, forgive me, but why were you informed prior to child services?" Harry asked. "Healer's oaths do include confidentiality."

"My, you are well informed," Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. "That is true, my boy, but in the cases of self-harm or abuse a healer is obliged to inform the patient's guardian and the relevant authority. I am your magical guardian."

Harry blinked. "Why have I never met you before?"

At this, Dumbledore's eyes lost their twinkle and he sighed heavily. "I had thought to allow you the unique pleasure of a mundane childhood, far from the concerns of magic and your celebrity status. I had no reason to believe that your relatives were anything less than suitable guardians."

"I see," Harry said, slowly. "Will the report to child services begin an investigation?"

"Most likely," Dumbledore replied. "I understand that your uncle passed away recently. Can you tell me what happened?"

Harry gave a slight wince and tried to think of the best way to describe what had happened. "The letter from Hogwarts distressed him. He had a heart attack," he explained in general terms.

"Madam Pomfrey seemed to think that it might have been accidental magic," Dumbledore said carefully, looking extremely concerned.

Harry shook his head. " _I_ did not kill my uncle," he stated forcefully.

"But someone did?" Dumbledore asked immediately, alarmed at Harry's intentional choice of words.

Harry remembered Death's words on that day. "Vernon's own decisions led to his death," he explained carefully. "You could say that he killed himself."

"Did you witness the event?"

"I did."

Dumbledore looked extremely old in that moment, and he pinched the bridge of his nose as he seemed to fold into the chair behind him. "I am sorry, my boy. How have you been since coming to Hogwarts?"

"I was not disturbed by his passing," Harry answered the question that the headmaster truly meant to ask. At the man's disturbed expression, Harry elaborated. "He was a pitiful, cruel man who was consumed by thoughtless hate. Perhaps in death he can find the peace that so eluded him in life."

"You are very profound for a boy your age," Dumbledore said. He did not appear entirely at ease with the direction that the conversation had taken. In fact, he appeared distinctly unsettled.

That was fine. Harry found that he had that kind of effect on people.

"If an investigation does take place, will I live with you instead of my relatives?" Harry asked.

Dumbledore sighed wearily once again. "I am afraid that between my responsibilities as Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and Headmaster of Hogwarts I would have little time to care for you over the summer."

"Why are you my magical guardian? Are we related?" Harry tired another tack.

"No, nothing like that. Students who do not have magical guardians are represented legally by the headmaster of their school," Dumbledore explained. "When your parents died, you were placed in the care of your aunt on your mother's side, but when you enrolled in Hogwarts I became your magical guardian."

If Dumbledore had not been his magical guardian before he enrolled, then how could he claim to have "allowed" Harry a mundane childhood?

"Are there no relatives on my father's side?" Harry asked. "No one has told me about my parents."

Dumbledore shook his head. "I'm sorry, my boy. You are the last of the Potter line. Don't worry too much. I will work with child services to find a place for you."

"I appreciate it, sir," Harry replied. "Is that all?"

"I want to personally apologize to you, Harry. As Chief Warlock, some of the blame for your placement at the Dursley's falls to me," Dumbledore told him, gazing sincerely into his eyes. Harry nodded graciously.

"You couldn't have known."

As he left the headmaster's office, Harry noticed an odd feeling, like a knot being unwound in the muscles of his forehead.


	5. Part 1 Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Other than a spacious area at the front of the room, the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom looked just the same as any other classroom might have looked if it were part of a medieval castle and illuminated by torches. That is to say, it looked like a high-ceilinged dungeon chamber had an illicit love-child with a stereotypical boarding school from the early twentieth century.

Harry found himself near the front of the room, confronted by a blond boy and his flunkies. They appeared offended by his very existence, and eyed him with naked contempt.

"The hat should have put you in Ravenclaw," the blonde boy drawled. He made it sound like an grave insult, but Harry couldn't' determine how his statement was demeaning.

"Perhaps," he agreed. The other boy blinked at him, and his two cronies glanced at each other, but no one said much of anything for a long moment.

"You are an insult to the House of Slytherin," the blond boy sneered. It felt like a non-sequitur.

Harry raised a single eyebrow in Professor Snape's infuriating manner. "Is that so? I defeated the Slytherin's Heir in combat. That makes me the Heir by right of conquest. Or are you saying that Slytherin's Heir does not belong in Slytherin?"

"You claim that you were capable enough to defeat the Dark Lord as a babe?" was the rebuttal. "Luck and nothing more saved your hide that night, Potter."

"A truly mighty wizard he must have been, to die upon his own spell," Harry retorted blandly. The other boy seemed to take this as a personal attack, and was working himself up for a biting retort when the professor swept into the classroom.

Professor Quirrel stepped up to the quarreling students, passing a heavy gaze between them. A sharp pain lanced through Harry's skull. "Are you quite finished?" he asked them sharply. Harry saw the man's fists clenched at his sides, but a deceptive stoicism kept his face expressionless, save for his flashing eyes, which seemed to gleam with inner fire.

"Yes, sir," they replied immediately, although not without glaring fiercely at each other.

Quirrel scoffed. "Fine, then," he said dismissively. After a short but noticeable pause where he visibly exercised restraint, he sneered, "Potter, _Heir of Slytherin_ , come stand at the front of the room."

The rest of the class had been listening to Harry and Malfoy's argument, and now they appeared just as happy to watch Harry's impending humiliation. He shuffled forward, holding his wand loosely in his right hand. The other Slytherins regarded him with baleful eyes, and he idly began to wonder if his comment about the Heir of Slytherin had been wise.

"This is Defense Against the Dark Arts," Quirrel intoned. He seemed calmer now, although it was clear that whatever dark thing which crawled in the shadows of his eyes had not entirely deserted him. "In this class, you will learn how to defend yourself against assault, how to identify cursed objects, how to dispel the undead, and how to ward against possession by malevolent spirits. In your first year, however, we will simply cover basic combative magic and curses." Here, he paused, contemplative. When he spoke, it seemed as if the words pained him. "To begin, I will demonstrate the stinging hex. It is a simple and useless spell, but it serves as an example of the category."

He thrust his wand forward and a spell leapt from its tip. Harry sidestepped as soon as he saw it, allowing the spell to splash against the stone wall, but he did not raise his wand.

"Good," Professor Quirrel barked, to the surprise of the class. "But can you do it again?"

This time, the spell was faster, and it struck Harry's left shoulder as he made to dodge. The result was a lance of sharp pain and a numb arm. He gasped and held his hand against the impact site.

The textbook had classified the stinging hex as a mildly dangerous spell capable of causing raised welts and bruises on impact. Was it really the sort of thing that professors cast on their students for demonstrations?

"What did you observe?" Quirrel asked. Malfoy raised his hand.

"You did not say an incantation."

"That's correct. It is skill that you will be formally taught in your sixth year," The professor nodded. "Anything else? No? Well, then, watch it again."

Spells could be loosely compared to bullets shot from a gun. Magic traveled slower in general, although the stinging hex was very quick as far as combative hexes went, but since they were both projectiles traveling in a roughly straight line, the concepts were comparable. The spell, as opposed to a bullet, moved just slow enough that someone who anticipated the spell might be capable of reacting to it.

Harry extended his wand along the trajectory of the spell. In the time that it took his arm to straighten, the spell had covered the ten yards between them and struck the tip of his wand at a slight angle, which glowed briefly white, before surging down his right arm like a current of electricity. A portion of the energy sloughed onto Harry's hand as white sparks, heating the skin uncomfortably.

He had read that most direct spells—charms, curses, or hexes that were contained in a field until making contact with another object—could be caught on a focus without damaging the wand, although the texts hadn't mentioned the effect of a partial block. The Unforgivables were the exception to this. Indirect spells, obviously, could not be caught, although there were certain shields that were designed to absorb them in a comparable manner.

"Mr. Potter, explain yourself," the professor requested briskly, lowering his wand.

"Most spells can be caught or deflected on any object which can carry magical current," he replied, cutting off his explanation before it could become a lecture.

"Name a spell that cannot," Quirrel demanded, turning his eyes to the class. When no reply was forthcoming, his lip curled. "I see none of the rest you did any reading prior to coming into this classroom. I won't be wasting our time going over the details of every spell and technique we discuss; I expect you to do your own research. Now, Potter?"

"Flame charms cannot be caught."

"Cast one," Quirrel ordered.

Harry frowned at this rather unreasonable request, but he raised his wand. Most flame charms weren't taught until some weeks into the first year, and others were never taught at all. Contemplating the simplest example, _incendio,_ Harry considered his choice of targets. He didn't want to cast it at the students, but he shouldn't immolate the professor's desk either. Eventually aimed his wand at the professor, figuring the man more than capable of defending himself.

He failed to notice the smoldering heat in the man's eyes intensify when he raised his wand.

Harry had read three different spell-books with _incendio_ as a part of their repertoire, and each of them had given a slightly different variant, all of which ultimately providing the same effect.

" _Incendio,_ " he whispered. The books had given a long explanation of wand motions, but it all seemed very complicated, and he had just seen Professor Quirrel cast the stinging hex without a gesture. Harry felt his magic stir weakly, and a pathetic gout of flame spewed from his wand, curled through the air, and dropped to the stone, where it guttered for a moment before winking out of existence.

Harry was rather proud to get even that on his first attempt, considering the state of his magical core, but the scattered laughter of his peers made him flush with embarrassment.

"Where are your wand motions, Potter? _Incendio_ is cast like this…" the professor waved his wand and a wave of flame burst into life, surging towards Harry in a broiling, knotted mass. It was most certainly _not incendio_ , but Professor Quirrel hadn't spoken an incantation…

Eyes wide, Harry bit out the first spell that came to mind.

"Rho!" A gust of wind burped from Harry's bucking wand, halted the advancing flame and scattering the heat between them. Later, he would reflect that it was fortuitous that he hadn't properly cast the wind spell, or else the whole room might have been engulfed in a cyclone.

The professor was watching him with narrowed eyes. "Explain yourself," he said, sounding pleased but looking anything but.

"I cast a wind charm to deflect the flame."

Quirrel nodded. "Where did you learn the charm?"

"A book," Harry lied. It was, in fact, one of the spells that Death had taught him. A favorite of the Ancient Greeks, as its incantation might imply.

Quirrel appeared unsatisfied, but was unwilling to pursue the topic.

"Alright. Pair up each of you, I want you to practice casting the stinging hex and catching the spell," Quirrel barked, organizing the pairs.

Harry ended up with Malfoy, who sneered at him immediately. "I bet you had fun showing off."

"He almost burnt me to a crisp," Harry replied evenly. As Malfoy opened his mouth to respond, Harry cast a stinging hex with the incantation 'hex.' It didn't appear to be very effective, but it certainly annoyed the other boy greatly.

Malfoy used the proper incantation. "Ictus!"

Harry caught it perfectly this time and noticed that the jolt of energy in his arm was less pronounced. What followed was an impromptu duel between the two boys, as each cast their spell as quickly as possible. Harry scored four or five hits and took only two before Quirrel interrupted them.

"Halt!" he barked, bringing the whole classroom to a standstill. "If you lot are going to duel, then we should do it properly. Come, stand here. And here."

Malfoy and Harry squared off, and Quirrel watched them, looking amused. "The first one to be struck loses the round. We'll make a game of it. The winner stays on, and whoever remains at the end of the class earns himself a pass on the next homework."

The reaction to this was unmitigated excitement all around.

"Now, first you bow," Quirrel instructed. "I'll count you off."

Although Malfoy looked like he was swallowing a lemon, he bowed. Then, they raised their wands.

 _Remember your stance,_ Death whispered. Harry corrected his footing, straightened his arm, and pointed his wand squarely at Malfoy's chest. He stood in such a way as to present the slimmest profile to his opponent; it resembled a classical fencing stance.

"Begin!"

Harry caught Malfoy's first spell and extended his arm. The energy that glowed at the tip of the wand shot forth just as the blond boy articulated his second spell, and it struck him directly in the forehead with a sound like an open palm against bare flesh.

Malfoy yelped and fell backwards, a red welt already visible on his pale skin.

Harry felt Quirrel watching him closely as the next Slytherin took Malfoy's place. Harry watched the other boys exchange a few words, and then the taller, dark-haired boy faced Harry, a small smirk on his lips. Harry recognized him as Theodore Nott.

They bowed.

"Begin!"

Harry got off the first spell and caught Nott's on his wand. Just as he sent a reprisal towards his opponent, Nott incanted a short, percussive spell that crossed the distance above Harry's guard and struck him in the mouth.

The spell snapped Harry's head back with blood spattering across the stones. He heard his stinging hex strike true and Quirrel bark an admonishment, but as he held his hand up to his lips and felt his warm blood on his fingers, he felt cold rage burn through him. Straightening, he faced Nott, mindful of the Professor's eye.

"It was a draw," he said past the loose skin of his cheeks, licking his profusely bleeding lip. The foreign sensation was alarming, and he wondered how bad the wound actually was.

Quirrel's eyes were fixed on the blood that dripped from Harry's face. Briefly, Harry wondered if the man was truly fit to be a teacher, but he was distracted as they were directed to take their positions once more.

"Begin!" Quirrel hissed, looking anticipatory at the dueling students.

Harry did not cast a stinging hex. Nott had escalated their little duel, and Harry replied in kind. he chose to cast the Babylonian striking hex, for he felt that it had a similar effect to the spell that Theodore had cast, and its incantation was fast enough for him to make first blood.

"Ko, ko, ko, ko," Harry murmured, twisting his wand four times. Theodore's spell shot towards him simultaneously, and Harry sidestepped, watching as each consecutive hex struck true. The reference book in the library had intimated that the Babylonian striking hex was a combative spell adapted from a simple charm which was designed to inflict a blunt force on impact, but he had never cast it before, and the description he had found was unfortunately sparse on the details.

Even if it was rather obscure, it was ridiculously easy to cast.

Harry had certainly not expected Theodore to stagger dramatically from a single blow, taking the second in the shoulder and the third in the jaw. The sound of each strike was akin to a hefty branch being snapped over a man's knee. With mounting guilt, Harry watched as teeth flew from Nott's mouth and the fourth hex thankfully sailed over his head as he fell boneless to the ground. Harry saw his opponent's chest rise and fall, and knew that he was still alive.

Blood dripped innocuously from Harry's mouth to the stone as everyone stared in silence.

Quirrel glared at Harry. "I suppose turnabout is fair play," he said. "But that warrants a detention regardless. Pevensy, take the both of them to the hospital wing. I assume you know how a levitation spell?"

The sandy-haired boy nodded, giving Harry a final glance before moving to Theodore's side. It took several attempts to properly levitate the unconscious Slytherin, and by that time Harry was already stepping through the door, on his way to Madam Pomfrey.

* * *

 _Your Defense professor is a…dangerous man. He struggles with inner demons beyond the usual base inclinations of mankind. Tread carefully, and avoid eye contact._ Death whispered these things into Harry's ear as he walked down the corridor to Professor Quirrel's office. None of it made him feel much better about his upcoming detention.

He paused in front of the door, took a breath, and stepped into the classroom. It was darker now, with only evening sky outside the small windows, and Quirrel seemed intent upon his work, sitting with his features carefully outlined by the light from three guttering candles. His hand held a quill, and a thick roll of parchment was laid upon the desk. He glanced up, black eyes catching and holding the firelight. Gesturing simply to a chair, his eyes followed the raven-haired boy as he came deeper into the darkened classroom.

Harry sat, feeling like a fly in a spider's web.

"So you think yourself to be the Heir of Slytherin," Professor Quirrel began quietly, breaking the tension with his voice. His eyes dropped down to his parchment once more, and Harry released a breath he hadn't realized that he had been holding.

"No, sir. I was only making a point," Harry explained tentatively.

"But you were correct, nonetheless. You did kill Lord Voldemort, who had proclaimed himself the heir," Quirrel pressed. Harry sensed that there was something…off about the way that he summarized the events which ended the last war, but he couldn't place his finger on it. "You should learn to hold fast to the things that you say. If you think what you say will be used against you, say nothing at all. Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps his peace."

"I did not kill Lord Voldemort," Harry replied simply.

At this, the pale man glanced up, then, looking at his student with narrowed eyes. Harry felt his scar itching, and his skin crawled under the man's dark gaze. "Why do you say that?"

 _His eyes! Do not look into his eyes!_

Harry dropped his eyes and stared fixedly at the back of his hands, tracing the veins with an idle finger. The odd feelings abated. He still felt clammy and uncomfortable, however, and it made him fidget in his seat.

"A babe cannot defeat a grown man," Harry said simply. "Surely my parents were the ones who killed him. No one witnessed the events, so all the things that have been written about it amount to wild speculation."

A long silence stretched between them, but Harry didn't dare glance up from his gently trembling fingers. "Of course. Then one of your parents would have taken the title. But they would not have had the chance to have another child to carry on the Slytherin name, and it would have died with Voldemort. Such a shame, that."

The way the professor blandly referenced their deaths set Harry on edge. "Why do you say his name?" Harry blurted before he could bite his tongue.

"Why do _you_ say it?" Quirrel turned the question around.

Harry shrugged. "The thing itself was fearsome, but his name is nothing. A false title."

Harry did not see the way that Quirrel's expression darkened upon hearing that.

"Did you know that the Dark Lord put a stigma on his name so that the location of anyone who spoke it was known to him?" the professor asked. Harry thought there was a hint of…smugness there, but that couldn't be possible. Surely the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor didn't _admire_ Voldemort's work.

"I didn't. Is that true?"

Harry's eyes, skittered up, across the professor's desk, and Harry saw that Quirrel was writing again. His hand moved swiftly and agitatedly on the page, like the arm of a polygraph.

Eventually, he said, "It was what the rumors said. He used to make examples of people that spoke it."

"Fear is a powerful weapon," Harry observed carefully. He wondered when his punishment would begin.

"Yes. And you used it today," Quirrel declared, quiet but suddenly dangerous. "That's why we are here, isn't it? I thought it was very well done."

"I don't understand."

"You made an example out of Theodore Nott. He struck you, so you struck back. Now the others will know not to trifle with you," Quirrel explained, as if he was talking to a toddler. He continued in the same manner. "Or is that not why you did it? I have to say, I especially enjoyed the way that you measured the strength of your spells. Under normal circumstances, why, those three hexes should have killed him! That is very advanced technique. A superb warning to anyone wishing to test your mettle."

"No, no!" Harry exclaimed. He worried his bottom lip, "I just…I was angry."

"I see," Quirrel ground past bared teeth, dropping all pretense to reveal cold fury. His eyes pinned Harry to his chair, and the raven-haired student looked stolidly at one of the torches. "So you used a hex that you had never used before on another student, and it was just a happy accident that the boy even survived the assault. Do you even know the spell that you cast?"

Quirrel removed an old, well-used spell-book from his desk, opened it to a specially marked section, and read in a calm voice. "The striking hex, developed in the Cradle of Civilization some thousands of years ago, is a combat spell which is prized for its short incantation and efficient results. It was derived from the methods used to pulverize stones to gravel. It is notable for being one of the few low-energy spells with such extremely violent effects."

Harry paled significantly upon that description.

"So, do you see what you could have done? You struck him three times, Mr. Potter," Quirrel said. "Mr. Nott should have died from the first blow, making the second and third not only redundant but grotesque. As things stand, he suffered a shattered jawbone and two cracked ribs, which are not inconsiderable injuries."

Harry swallowed thickly. "He cast a cutting hex," he replied weakly. Madam Pomfrey had told him that he was lucky the hex had not been stronger; he supposed Nott was just as lucky in the same way.

"The fact that you nearly killed Nott doesn't worry me nearly as much as the fact that you did it unintentionally," the pale man declared, much to Harry's shock. "Magic is based on intent, and if you _don't_ direct it, then not even the gods themselves know what might happen!" He stood up, then, and Harry could see his whole body vibrating in place. "Magic can _kill,_ Potter. I thought that you, of all people, might understand that. Never, _ever_ cast a spell at anyone or any _thing_ unless you know _exactly_ what it will do. Are we perfectly clear?"

The air seemed thick with static electricity, and Harry momentarily forgot to avoid the professor's eyes in the face of the man's ire. As a result, a fierce stab of pain lanced through his skull, originating at his scar.

"Yes or no?" the professor asked, deathly quiet. Harry saw that darkness crawling in Quirrel's eyes and feared it desperately. He nodded his head, unconsciously leaning away from the older man.

"Good." Quirrel bit out, collapsing heavily into his chair. A single shaking hand rose to rest over his eyes. "Get out of my sight, Potter."

Harry had never fled from a room so quickly in his life.


	6. Part 1 Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Severus Snape gauged the expression on Albus Dumbledore's face as they sat across from each other, both deep in thought. He wondered just what, exactly, the headmaster thought he was doing when it came to the Potter boy, but whatever thoughts swirling about in the old man's head were entirely unknown to him. No one had been more surprised than Severus when it was discovered that the Potter scion had been mistreated at the Dursley household. He knew Petunia, and he wondered just how much she must have changed in the years since they had last seen one another for her to neglect her nephew so terribly.

He had never known the shrew of a woman's husband, however, and he knew better than most just how little anyone's sympathy mattered in the face of a single man's wroth. He could easily imagine a circumstance where the decisions of her husband rendered her helpless to do anything for or against the boy, no matter her feelings towards him.

"Have you noticed anything… _odd_ about Harry?" Dumbledore asked, looking perfectly concerned. Severus could see the calculating gleam in his eyes however, almost entirely disguised by the grandfatherly twinkle he affected most often.

Severus scoffed. "He's scrawny, pale, and short. He doesn't speak to anyone unless they deliberately confront him. He spends all his time studying in the library or practicing magic out by the lake. You'll have to clarify what you mean by _odd._ "

Albus sighed. "Did you notice his eyes, Severus?"

"At first I would have said that he had his mother's green eyes," Severus eventually admitted. "But hers were never so disconcerting. If I had to describe them I would say they are too large for his face, and too bright to be natural."

"Indeed. Have you noticed him talking to himself? Sleepwalking?" Dumbledore pressed. Severus, who knew more than almost anyone else alive about the darker side of magic, recognized immediately what Dumbledore was getting at with this line of questioning.

"You think the boy is possessed?" Snape asked, raising a single dark eyebrow. "That is entirely impossible. I saw nothing with legilimency, and since you're asking _me_ I would have to assume that you haven't either."

Dumbledore sighed. "How many times do I have to tell you to be cautious when using legilimency on your students, Severus?"

"You're one to talk, Albus," Severus shot back blandly. "My point stands."

They sat in silence for a short time, and Severus focused more intently on the headmaster. If Dumbledore became convinced that the boy was dangerous, there was no telling what he might do, whether his concerns were valid or not.

"He seems much too articulate for his age. Too knowledgeable," Dumbledore mused. "And he grievously injured the Nott boy. Where did he learn to cast such a spell?"

"Quirrel should have stepped in," Severus pointed out. "Anyone would have reacted poorly in Potter's position. And as I said, he spends all his time in books. The library of Hogwarts contains some titles better left unread, or how do you think I began my investigations into the Dark Arts?"

"But not everyone would react so violently," Dumbledore posited simply, looking rather disturbed. "Broken bones are no comparison to a single cut. In fact, if Harry had cast those spells properly…"

Severus chuckled darkly. "That cutting curse might have beheaded Potter, if Nott was a stronger wizard. Both of them survived. I would put the entire incident from your mind, Headmaster. One altercation is hardly indicative of his mental state. I would be more concerned about the other Slytherin students. There has been a good deal of scheming among them since the Sorting. Potter has a lot of enemies; Nott's injuries could prove to delay the inevitable confrontation."

"Inevitable?" Dumbledore asked, sounding surprised.

"You didn't think that the other students in Slytherin, raised by supporters of Dark Lord, would welcome the boy widely believed to have defeated him into their house, did you?"

Albus shook his head slowly. "Children squabble. It's a part of growing up."

"This isn't some schoolyard scuffle I'm talking about!" Severus exclaimed. "The goal is to get Harry out of Slytherin, either by expulsion, debilitating injury, or death."

"Surely you exaggerate," Dumbledore waved the statement aside. "You _are_ talking about students, remember."

"The Dark Lord was once a student," Severus pointed out darkly. When no reply was forthcoming, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. Albus Dumbledore would never truly understand human nature. "Fine, let me handle my own students. What are your concerns about Harry, exactly?"

At the mention of the boy's name, Albus focused suddenly on Severus and gave a smile. The Head of Slytherin only scowled at him until he spoke. "Harry doesn't act like a typical first-year student, and I don't know why. Doesn't it concern you?"

"He might be strange, but it is nothing that hasn't been seen before. Perhaps it could be related to the fact that you placed him in a neglectful household," Snape pointed out, feeling a slight pang of guilt at the broken expression he put on Albus' face. "If you remember, I was just as solemn as he was when I came to Hogwarts."

The headmaster folded his hands on the desk. "And you ended up delving into the dark arts, joining an up and coming dark lord, and contributing to his reign of terror for several years," was his crushing reprisal. "Is that what you want for young Harry?"

Severus stood up abruptly, dropping his hands as his chair screeched across the stone floor. "I want _nothing_ for the boy, one way or another. _You_ are the one intent on engineering his life, Albus. I only wonder how he'll react to the decisions you've made when he becomes aware of them."

With that, he departed from the headmaster's office, trembling with outward rage and a deeply buried guilt. By the time he reached his office in the dungeon and settled into his chair, he had mostly recovered his temper, which only left the familiar discomfort of his regret. He sighed and withdrew a stack of essays from his desk.

* * *

Severus knew a dark wizard when he saw them. Being of man with questionable history himself, and bearing the marks of a man that had sold his soul to the Devil, it was easy enough for him to identify similar traits in others. That was why he watched Quirinus Quirrel like a hawk ever since the man had been hired.

Dumbledore knew that The Dark Lord would make an attempt to recover the Philosopher's Stone from Hogwarts, he just didn't know when or how such an attempt would be made. Severus had always insisted that he would never show himself personally, even if he was still alive, which remained a dubious proposition. The most likely result of this ruse was the entrapment of one of the Dark lord's loyal followers.

At first, Severus had assumed that Quirrel was that person. It would have to be someone that hadn't openly served the Dark Lord in life, one of his sleeper agents. Someone that people wouldn't immediately suspect. He would have to have either an unassailable reputation or no reputation at all.

Quirinus Quirrel was widely known among certain circles as being an extremely adept Mage Hunter, a man who spent his life killing dangerous creatures or outlawed wizards across the world. He had at least fifteen confirmed kills of so-called "dark" wizards, and many times that number in dangerous creatures. Vampires, Werewolves, acromantula, poltergeists, harmful spirits, demons…none were safe from him.

How ironic it would be, that a man who spent his life tracking down and destroying evil would pledge himself to perhaps the greatest evil to walk this earth in the last century?

Yes, Severus had watched the man closely. Imagine his surprise and, perhaps, his disappointment to discover a competent, if rather unorthodox, teacher. A stern man, but never a cruel one. He had made some questionable decisions so far this year, such as allowing the duel between Nott and Potter, but his detentions appeared to be little more than a serious conversation. Even Pomona sprout put more effort into her punishments, and yet Quirrel's heart-to-hearts seemed more effective. He never had to speak to a student twice.

Severus watched, and saw nothing. There were shadows crawling in the man's eyes, the same that haunted the potions master. He walked like someone who carried a great burden, and could often be seen rubbing his temples. But these things, well...for a man with Quirrel's history, they were unsurprising.

Eventually, Severus began to see more. He caught the defense professor muttering to himself as he walked alone in the corridors. As Snape patrolled the halls after curfew, he sometimes saw Quirrel lurking in shadows or walking stiffly, like a marionette on strings.

He saw these things and he knew. That was why he wasn't surprised when the man came to the potions master's office late at night, ghosting into the room wearing a dark cloak. His turban, which was usually white, had been replaced by a darker wrapping, and when Snape looked at his eyes, he knew that this wasn't Quirrel at all, but rather the thing that had been hiding in his eyes. At long last, it had crushed him.

His wand slapped into his hand as he cast a stasis charm over the potion he had been brewing, letting it fall idly to his side, where he could bring it up to cast before a man could blink.

"Can I help you…Quirinus?" Severus asked, stepping away from the potion, and facing the other man squarely. He paused deliberately on the man's name, because he knew that it was no longer true.

A ghost of a smile, cold and threatening like a wolf baring its teeth, flashed on Quirinus' face. "I spent…years traveling the world. Most of my life. Do you know what I found?"

"I'm sure that you'll enlighten me," Snape drawled.

"I confronted the monsters that no one else dared to whisper about. I killed the men that no one thought could be killed. I thought I was making a difference. Thought that it was good versus evil. Black and white," here, he paused, and leaned forward just enough for the torchlight to play across his features. A red light gleamed in his eyes. "All the time I spent taught me nothing. In the end, there is no dark, no light. There is only power. Have you…heard that before, Severus Snape?"

The words told Snape more clearly than a declaration written in flaming letters who it was that he spoke to. He tensed immediately, gripping his wand with white knuckles, and cursed Dumbledore's infernal luck.

The Dark Lord himself, against all logic, was _here_.

"And what led you to that conclusion?" Severus asked carefully, making his way to his desk, where a small charm laid disguised as a letter opener. An artifact which would alert Dumbledore's office of danger.

"Don't take another step, Severus, my old friend," Quirinus/Voldemort whispered, and Severus halted as if he had run into a brick wall. "As I wandered the hills of Slovenia, following a lead on a dark spirit that had been causing trouble for some of the muggle towns in the area, I encountered someone who taught me many things. I think you might know his name. He knows yours."

Severus turned around, looking carefully at the pale man. "So, is there anything left of Quirnus Quirrel? Or did he die in those hills?"

"He's a stubborn soul," Quirinus said, in a dark voice that held nothing of the man that Severus had observed. "He reminds me of you, Severus, when you joined me. Passionate, murderous, and so very _dangerous._ Ah, a worthy opponent indeed."

"Why are you here?"

"I want the Philosopher's Stone. And you're going to help me get it, aren't you, Severus?" a cruel grimace twisted Quirrel's expression, and Snape knew that he had no choice.

* * *

It was nearly four o'clock in the morning, but Severus Snape didn't care. The gargoyle wisely chose not to stand in his way as he burst into the Headmaster's office, banging sharply on the door to his adjoining chambers and pacing impatiently before it.

Moments later, Albus Dumbledore opened the door with his dark, black wand in his hand, dressed in a star-spangled nightie with a drooping blue hat on his head. His thin hair was sticking straight from his head in all directions, and the ends of his beard were curling up towards his chin.

"Severus?" he asked, still tense. The potions master recognized now that these were the instincts of the warrior that Albus had once been. Habits that had probably saved his life many times in the war with Grindelwald on the continent.

"I just had an interesting conversation with You-Know-Who in my office, Headmaster," Snape hissed quietly, looking over his shoulder as if he might see Quirinus' tortured expression just there, with the red light still in his eyes.

Albus paled but did not relax his tense posture. "What was your father's real name?"

"Tobias, Albus," Snape hissed exasperatedly. At this, Dumbledore finally relaxed and stepped past the dark potions master into his office.

"Tell me everything."


	7. Part 1 Chapter 6

A/N: I am not one for lengthy author's notes, but I wanted to express my appreciation for the interest that i have received so far in this story. I hope that you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Chapter 6

"Some spells can be cast without wand motions, but others require intricate patterns," Harry observed, turning the page of his book. Death, who was sitting beside him, inclined his head.

"It depends on willpower. All magic is manipulation of the material world; the wizard imposes his will upon the natural order. Some manipulations are more difficult. The magical focus like your wand and its motions allow wizards to cast stronger spells with less willpower by creating and manipulating magical fields," the ageless being explained.

"What is willpower?"

Death, as always, had an answer. "It can be measured by a person's ability to control their magic. Willpower is the ability of an individual to control their own actions. It is the skills of discipline and visualization."

"More willpower means easier spell-casting," Harry paraphrased.

Death shook his head, but spoke affirmatively, "That is a sufficient understanding. Transfiguration cultivates willpower most effectively."

Thinking of McGonagall's class made Harry smile. He greatly enjoyed changing the matchstick to a needle, and he wished that she had not been so strict about practicing outside of class. He would have liked to try the pincushion to hedgehog transfiguration.

Harry closed the charms book and picked up the _Tales of Beedle the Bard._ The librarian had pointed him to this title when he asked about the Peverell brothers, but it seemed like a book of fairy tales to him. Still, he cracked it open and peered at the table of contents.

He found the story of the three brothers amusing. "Did this really happen?" he asked, imagining Death appearing to three people simply because they had crossed a flooding river.

"No," Death responded. "The Peverell brothers were three men after my own heart. I gifted them those artifacts because they were faithful to me, like you. The story was written when it became widely known that they wielded immensely powerful talismans."

"What really happened to them?" Harry asked.

"Much the way that the fairy tale describes. Antioch was killed by those who were envious of his power, Cadmus took his own life, and Ignotus lived a long and fruitful life, passing the cloak on to his children before he, too, died," Death murmured, brushing a tender hand over the animated painting of Antioch.

Harry was appalled. "How is that possible?"

"You have such faith in me, my child," Death chided him kindly, and Harry stared deeply into the endless shadows of his teacher's eyes. "I cannot save you from every danger, or ward against every threat. Likewise, I could not always protect them. I knew their fate when I gave them my gifts; it did not cheapen my love for them. They reside with me now, and that which was stolen from them brings a curse upon anyone unworthy of my talismans."

"Dumbledore's wand," Harry whispered, frowning. "If you knew that your gifts would kill them, why did you give them?"

"All men die. Should I have rewarded their service with nothing? They knew that I am harsh master; it made their love all the sweeter."

"Dumbledore's wand is the death-stick?" Harry asked again, setting aside the other matter for later reflection.

"That is such a crude name," Death replied, a smile curling his lips. "But, yes. It was called Antioch's Bane when it was not a child's story."

"And the others? Why would you give Cadmus a stone only to taunt him with pale imitations of the ones he loved?" Harry asked.

At once, the ethereal being's expression hardened. "I did nothing of the sort. Mortals speak of what they do not understand; do not take them at their word. The Resurrection Stone allows a glimpse into eternity, and Cadmus yearned for what he saw more than his purpose in the world of the living."

"But you knew. You said that you knew," Harry protested. "I just…I don't understand. Is that not a curse?"

"Some gifts are better known as curses," Death answered quietly. "Gift or curse, Cadmus chose his own fate, and although I was saddened by his death, I welcomed my faithful servant into the afterlife."

Harry thought for a long time, and eventually picked up another book. "I still don't understand. If you know the future, then how can there be a choice?"

"You will know in time," Death told him. "One day, you will wield all three of my Hallows."

Harry froze, forgetting to breathe. "What? And share the fate of the three doomed brothers?"

"Perhaps," Death allowed, although he looked disappointed in Harry's response. "That is for you to decide. Never before in history has anyone mastered all three of my talismans. Some have intimated that such a being would become the Master of Death."

"That's ridiculous," Harry scoffed, thinking of how his heart had stilled when Death had held it in his hand.

"Of course," Death agreed. "To master me would be to become a god. Many have tried to seize such a title, and all have failed in the end."

"What will I become when all three are united?" Harry dared to ask.

Death gazed sadly at him. "I often weep for you," the being confessed suddenly, and Harry could only stare in surprise and disbelief. He could not imagine this specter, the embodiment of unfeeling Death doing such a thing. "Do you not regret that I have taken blessed ignorance from you? All living creatures exist in the shadow of Death, but none so intimately as you. I have stolen your life, and yet you live on."

"That is not true," Harry immediately argued, shaking his head. "You saved me."

"No…I have condemned you," Death lamented. He glanced aside and straightened suddenly, "I shall leave you to your studies."

"Wait!" Harry exclaimed, but his master was gone. He was met by a furious _shush_ from Madam Pince, and eventually he opened the book, only to stare unseeing at the page.

* * *

It was near curfew when Harry was confronted in the dungeons. He should have expected something of this sort, since he had faced bullies in muggle school often enough, but he would be the first to admit that he had become rather complacent during his time at Hogwarts. He should have known better than to linger in places where the teachers could not see him.

There were five of them, all of them older than him. They were wearing nondescript black robes and simple white masks meant to conceal their identities. This, more than the fact that he was outnumbered and outclassed, frightened Harry. The mask told him that they intended serious harm—the sort which might have them expelled or thrown in prison they were caught.

Harry imagined that they had all grown up hearing the drivel that had been written about the Boy-Who-Lived, and he knew that they would have taken it as a grave insult to find the boy-hero in their house. A house known for its cunning and ambition. The house of the late Dark Lord.

"Potter," the leader of the pack snarled. His voice was distorted somehow, probably by a charm on the mask that he wore. It was meant to be intimidating, but it only revealed the cowardice of the one who wore a mask to conceal his identity.

Harry palmed his wand, and he knew that he would lose a fight if it came to it. It was the inevitability of the thing that made his blood sing.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, perfectly calm in the face of violence. They were boys making play at the games of men, but perhaps these games could still prove…lethal.

"It doesn't matter," the leader sneered. "We thought we'd get together and welcome you to Slytherin House right proper. Heard that you were already making a name for yourself. So you fancy yourself the Dark Lord's equal?"

With no further ado, they started in on him.

 _Shield yourself,_ Death advised. Having never cast the spell, Harry hesitated, and was nearly too late. Still, when he whispered the incantation, a shimmering golden shield sprang up, deflecting several spells and giving him time to sidestep before it failed with a spectacular flash.

The dueling manuals said to keep himself moving at all times. Present a thin profile. Cast accurately and often. Only shield when absolutely necessary.

It was more difficult in reality than it had seemed on paper. Lights whizzed past his head, messing his hair or cutting through his robes. Harry caught several spells and returned them, and he began casting the same hex that he had used on Nott, only he aimed at his opponent's legs.

He had gotten better at it, and he didn't want to _kill_ anyone tonight. Unlike his opponents, it seemed.

One of his attacks slipped through a flickering shield and made gruesome work of the boy's knee. He fell, screaming, and Harry winced. His enemies increased the intensity of their spells, likely realizing that they were running out of time.

Light flared in the corridor as Harry's second barrier collapsed, and as he sidestepped a writhing red band of energy clipped his side, just below his ribs. His robes snapped taught as the unhindered section of the spell hissed through the air behind him. Hissing in pain, Harry caught two spells on his wand and gathered power in his chest, snarling and aiming his wand at the line of his enemies.

A burst of power exploded from him, expanding in a rippling sphere. The walls shook and suits of armor clattered thunderously to the floor, but Harry sagged visibly from the effort. The older boys staggered away from him, renewing their assault. Harry stood still for just a second too long.

A white hex shaped like a dragon tear slammed into the right side of his rib-cage as he made to turn aside, lifting him several inches from the ground. He felt his bones give dangerously against the force of the hex and gasped as his back hit the ground. Turning his wand in a last desperate riposte, he lashed out with a cutting charm that bit into the casting arm of one of his attackers.

His wand was ripped from his grasp. His eyes followed its trajectory even as a storm of spell-fire barraged his prone form. He didn't know how many times he was struck, or what sort of spells were used, but he could feel each and every cut, puncture, and bludgeon. He coughed, tasting blood, and felt an unbearable weight on his chest.

Past the flashing light, in the shadows of the corridor's high ceiling, Harry saw Death watching him with an inscrutable expression on his face. Helpless anger curled in his gut like a fist, but it was forgotten completely as a shock of energy was delivered to his chest like the crack of a whip. A wet scream tore from his lips.

Suddenly, a sound like shattering glass cut off the voices of his torturers. Harry released a gust of air, unable to raise his head from the floor and see what had happened. He turned to the side and spat a mouthful of blood onto the stone, catching sight of dark boots and a billowing black cloak.

"What is the meaning of this barbarism?" Professor Snape hissed, sounding very much like the snake that was Slytherin's symbol. Harry couldn't remember a time when he had been grateful to see the rather dour potions master, but at this moment he could have hugged him. If he still had the strength to stand.

Harry heard frantic footfalls and the sound of snapping wood. A moment later he saw Professor Snape's face above him, cycling through expressions of fury and concern. His body was lifted from the ground, and Harry saw what remained of his attackers in the corridor.

Wands were broken and cast aside, including Harry's own holly and phoenix feather focus. The boy whose leg had been shattered laid alone on the stones. The last thing that Harry saw before consciousness slipped away from him was Death's reassuring smile and the swift motion of the corridor walls.

* * *

"A schoolyard brawl does not normally result in multiple life-threatening injuries," Harry heard someone speaking. "In fact, I have no idea how Mr. Potter survived long enough for me to stabilize him."

"I assure you, Mr. Potter gave as good as he got from the glimpse of the confrontation that I witnessed. At least until he lost his footing," came the voice of his head of house. "However, I am deeply concerned by the amount of scheming that went into this. The attackers wore masks and used disposable are not easy to find or cheap to buy. "

"I don't think one broken leg can be equated with the number of potentially lethal spells that were aimed at the poor boy," Pomfrey argued tightly. "There was clearly murderous intent on the one side and not the other. What could have possessed your students to begin plotting the demise of their house-mates?"

"The headmaster has informed me that he will be making an announcement about the incident in the morning," Professor Snape replied, deliberately avoiding the nurse's question. "I will also be speaking with my students. It will be almost impossible to discover the identities of the attackers unless Flint chooses to betray his co-conspirators."

Opening his eyes, Harry saw that he was in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey and Professor Snape were discussing something at the foot of his bed, and they only noticed that he was awake when he croaked a plea for water.

It was quickly brought to him. "Mr. Potter, can you explain to me what went on in that corridor?" Professor Snape asked.

"I was returning late from the library when they stopped me. They said that they were going to welcome me to Slytherin House properly," Harry answered. He gnawed his bottom lip, "Was anyone seriously hurt? I know a few of my spells landed."

"I assume you mean other than yourself?" Snape questioned blithely. "Marcus Flint's leg was mangled almost beyond recognition. I admit I find myself curious as to where a first year student only a week into his schooling learned such an effective hex."

"Professor Snape!" Pomfrey exclaimed. She glanced at Harry and sighed. "Flint had to be taken to St. Mungos. He'll be right as rain in a few days, much the same as you. Well, except for the small matter of his upcoming expulsion."

Harry nodded, wrestling with a sense of savage satisfaction. "How badly was I injured?"

Professor Snape answered before Pomfrey could interject. "You were deeply cut in several places and pierced in others. You had three broken ribs and a shattered wrist. You'll have a few curse scars from the encounter, I'm sure. However, none of your house-mates used any illegal curses. It was a simple matter to correct the damage."

Harry blinked in surprise. "I don't know how things got so out of hand."

"I imagine it was because five of your fellow students meant to have you killed or permanently disabled," Snape drawled. His eyes sharpened abruptly, and he leaned forward, trying to catch Harry's eyes. "What spell did you use on Marcus Flint?"

"The Babylonian striking hex," Harry replied honestly, if a little reluctantly. "It is the only combative spell that I know other than the stinging hex and a cutting charm."

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose, although he did not look surprised.

"It was in a book," Harry explained sheepishly. "The incantation is short and there are no wand motions. It is a very easy spell."

"Yes, and you saw what it did to Flint," Snape snapped. "I imagine this is the same spell you used on Nott in Quirrel's class?"

At Harry's nod, even Madam Pomfrey looked appalled. "Mr. Potter! Do you know what might have happened to Mr. Nott if your spell had been fully cast?"

"Yes," he snapped tiredly. "I know. Professor Quirrel was extremely cross with me, and I am sorry about Nott. But Flint and his gang started that fight, and I won't apologize for defending my life."

"Your life?" Madam Pomfrey whispered, and Harry could see that she was still struggling to come to terms with the severity of injuries. She had been the one saying that he had only just survived.

Harry glanced at her and frowned. "Ma'am, I have been bullied and trampled my whole life because I was too weak to fight back. With magic, I can make my tormentors pay for every bruise. In the future, they will remember that, and perhaps choose an easier target. You said yourself that I should be dead, and this from an encounter with my peers in Slytherin House. How much worse could it be in the future, if they believe themselves free to attack me with impunity?"

Professor Snape looked especially uncomfortable as Harry explained his reasoning, but Madam Pomfrey was the one who shook her head. "You'll be expelled from Hogwarts if this kind of thing happens again, Harry."

"And what of the five older boys that broke three of my ribs, shattered my wrist, and nearly killed me with gross bodily harm? All while wearing masks to conceal their identities and using wands specifically made to obscure the spells that they cast?" Harry snapped. "Should I have laid down in the corridor and taken their spell-fire?"

"Rest assured that the Headmaster was most distressed when he heard about the altercation. Given that you were the one most seriously injured, he is inclined to be lenient. However, you do not appear to regret the serious injury that was inflicted on one of your peers," Professor Snape explained. Harry watched him closely, and saw that his expression was tightly controlled. He didn't agree with Dumbledore's decision, then. "The issue is no longer black and white, especially since you demonstrated violence with Mr. Nott earlier this month."

"You'll notice that both times I was responding to prior aggression," Harry replied evenly, closing his eyes and leaning back on the pillow. "Does it really matter? We all must do as we must."

"You have some potions to take," Madam Pomfrey told him, forcing him to open his eyes once again if only to glare at the woman weakly. "And don't look at me like that. You asked for my help, remember?"

Harry sighed and resigned himself to Snape's foul-tasting brews and a lengthy stay in the lovely company of the Hogwarts nurse.


	8. Part 1 Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Harry sat apart from the other Slytherin students in the Great Hall, stewing in silence with one hand resting on his new wand. An ashen shaft with arachne venom as its core, the focus seemed to have a mind of its own, and it was almost icy in his hands. He hated it, and he had a feeling that the sentiment was mutual.

Dumbledore had gotten up the day after the attack to made a speech about responsibility, discussing the events of the dishonorable attack in general terms and warning everyone that magic could be extremely dangerous if used irresponsibly. In short, he seemed completely content to do nothing at all beyond expelling the only one that had been caught red-handed.

"I need to be stronger," Harry muttered, pushing uselessly at the food on his plate. He was at once disgusted and resigned. Dumbledore starting an inquisition on his behalf would only make things worse. Things wouldn't have become so lethal if he had been capable of defending himself effectively. Had he held out just thirty seconds longer...

"You are stronger now than you were when I found you," Death interrupted his thoughts from across the table. The dark-haired boy, well-used to his master's habit of appearing quite suddenly, glanced up at him and gave no other response. "You have grown quickly in the days since your uncle's death. It has made you much wiser than your peers."

"Dumbledore said that I was very profound for a boy my age," Harry murmured, crinkling his nose in distaste. "People make that observation as if it were a curse."

"There is beauty in the ignorance of adolescence," Death replied. "Adults see that you cannot understand it, and that is what saddens them."

"What beauty?" Harry asked, casting his eyes about the great hall. "The others spend their time gossiping about quidditch games, spreading rumors about each other, and playing games. All of this in the face of a hard, unforgiving world that waits for them just beyond the walls of this fortress. It is morbid rather than beautiful."

"Don't you see?" Death whispered. " _That_ is why your professors pity you. None of the other students here would have made that same observation. They do not carry that weight."

Harry chewed on is biscuit, wagging his head slowly. "I don't understand it."

"They will live simple lives," Death explained. "Most of them will marry, find a job, raise children, grow old, and die peacefully. Why should they spend their time dwelling on the sorrows of the world?"

"They could make a difference, if only they cared enough to try," Harry posited.

"They were not born with a terrible fate, like you were," Death whispered. "I told you that I weep for you, and this is why. You do not have the luxury of a simple life, or even a natural one."

Harry shook his head. "It is nothing more than willful ignorance," he declared heatedly. "These people have _magic_. Imagine the good that they could do with it! Instead, they chase distraction and fleeting pleasures."

"If no one took the time to raise a family, then humanity would die out faster than a candle in a windstorm. If no one took the time to work a profession, what then would society become?" Death corrected him gently. "These are honorable pursuits. Most people do as their instincts direct them. Others, like you, are called to a different purpose."

"And what is my purpose?" Harry asked plaintively.

"Are you quite alright, Mr. Potter?" Professor McGonagall asked, and this time Harry did jump, dropping his fork as he turned to see the woman looking at him strangely from the aisle between the tables. A few of the other students were also watching him, but it was the faculty table that caught his attention.

Both Professor Snape and Headmaster Dumbledore eyed him with dark eyes. He could practically feel their gazes on him like pricks of heat against his skin.

"Yes, yes," he waved the deputy headmistress away. "Just feeling…rather contemplative today."

She continued to stare for a long moment. "I see." The raven-haired student could tell that she did not. Still, she continued walking, and Harry turned his eyes back to Professor Snape, who continued to pierce him with his eyes. Raising an eyebrow, Harry returned to his meal.

He was oblivious to the significant look that the headmaster shared with the head of Slytherin house.

It was later, when he was beside the lake, that Death returned to him. Harry saw him and released a particularly violent spell into the water.

"You will unite my talismans and become an instrument of my will on Earth," he answered Harry's parting question as they watched the ripples settle across the surface of the lake. "And it will begin with the destruction of the abomination Tom Riddle."

"But what does that entail? What is your vision for Earth?" Harry pressed, dropping his wand as his final spell splashed uselessly into the water, botched utterly.

Death dropped his hood, and Harry was surprised to find that his eyes were not encompassed by shadow, but rather gold and bright, like the midday sun. "You presume to know me, but I exist beyond your comprehension. You call me 'Death,' but I would be a pale shadow of my true self if that were my only name."

"You are not Death?" Harry asked, oddly pained by the admission.

The specter's features were solemn. "No mortal man can claim to understand me truly. I existed before the idea of the Grim, before Osiris or Hades. It could never have been so simple."

"But…I saw you when I…" Harry choked on the word.

At this, the timeless being gave him a kind, if wistful smile. "I came to you as you died, that is true. You perceived the thing that you expected to see, and indeed you see more clearly than anyone else who lives. You saw me truly, but you did not see _all_ of me."

"Who are you, if you are not Death?"

"In and throughout all things, _I am_. Before this galaxy was set spinning on its axis, I _was_ , and I shall _be_ long after the stars have ceased to burn in the heavens," the being intoned, raising a hand and laying it on Harry's shoulder. The boy shook like a leaf in the wind, in speechless awe. "I am everything and nothing. Does that answer your question?"

Numb, Harry fell to his knees. He didn't dare to look into the face of power. Still, he managed to shake his head. Through all that, he had received no name.

"I have been called many things by many people. You may call me El."

Harry shook his head, turning over the name in his head. It seemed a too simple name for this, a _god_ given form. "I am…nothing to you. What use could I possibly be to you?"

"Ah, and here you wonder if I shall abandon you," El reached down and drew Harry to his feet. "I beheld your soul in the palms of my hands before your conception. Should I not concern myself with all of my creations? You think far too little of yourself."

"My life is like dust in the wind," Harry insisted. "I could defeat every evil on this Earth for a hundred years and it would amount to nothing! What could I possibly do for one who has seen the towers of Babylon and the Pharaohs of Egypt in their prime?"

"If you so much as reached out your hand to someone who had fallen, I would see it, and I would be proud," El whispered. "I would remember that small kindness, long after the day of your final breath." Harry shook his head, incapable of comprehension, and El took a step away from him. "It changes nothing. The oaths between us remains."

This was good. It was solid ground, something that Harry could cling to as the rest of his world shifted around him. He still had objectives to complete, and was not left without direction.

"I need to think," Harry managed to whisper, although he feared the response he might receive. He hadn't expected gentle understanding, however, and it almost disconcerted him more than El's ire.

"Go. I will be with you."

Why was it that those words were less comforting now than when it had been only Death saying them? Was it really such a drastic difference, between one primordial being and another?

Shaking his head, Harry turned back towards the towering battlements of Hogwarts, and he felt the golden eyes of his master watching him the whole way back to the gate.

* * *

Hogwarts was a suddenly lonely place. In the company of ghosts, Harry stalked the halls of the ancient castle, spending his time buried in the pages of dusty old books or running laps around the lake. Death, or El, continued to teach him about magic, sometimes visiting Harry in dreams to engage him in more practical lessons, but things were different—less comfortable—now. Harry felt constantly threatened and perpetually watched, not only in the presence of the immortal, but also during each and every interaction with his peers. Every time he turned, he could see eyes of Professor Snape, Professor Quirrel, or Headmaster Dumbledore following his movements.

His birthday came and passed without so much as a cursory thought. On that day, he looked at himself and saw his gaunt visage, pale skin, bright eyes, but he was proud regardless of his unnatural appearance. He was stronger now. Hunger had left its mark upon him, but his vitality had been restored.

Days passed quickly, and soon enough, Harry was carefully weaned from his potions and restricted to a very particular diet. Madam Pomfrey was a constant figure in his life, meeting with him nearly on a daily basis. He took up other exercises as well, using books from the library as his guide.

It seemed that no matter how he worked, he remained wiry and thin. Harry was beginning to think that he would permanently resemble Death himself, the specter that had held his still-beating heart in a single palm, and the thought brought him a surprising amount of peace.

Sometimes, El chose to take on the familiar appearance of Death, as he had been before, but Harry never felt at peace with him in spite of this. His changing aspects were simply another reminder that El was far beyond Harry's comprehension.

He was in the middle of practicing some of his spells beside the lake once again when El eventually confronted him about their recently strained relationship.

"You have been distant," he said, reaching out when Harry paused in his spell-casting. The boy flinched away instinctively, but El's hand remained outstretched. "You did not fear Death's touch. Am I truly so fearsome to you now?"

"Sorry," Harry apologized, shuffling his feet and gnawing his lip. "I just…you're _you_ and I'm just…well, a mortal. Less than that. A weak boy of eleven years. It feels wrong."

"You are ashamed," El said, and Harry shrugged. Suddenly, El was standing much closer to Harry than before, and his hand was lifting the boy's chin so that their eyes met. An electric buzz gathered behind Harry's eyes and refused to dissipate. His face felt warm, and his breath caught. "My child, you can hide nothing from me. Would I be here, guiding you, if I did not love you?"

"Love?" Harry choked out the word. He had heard it used before, by Petunia when she spoiled Dudley, or in songs. It seemed to be either a delusion or an impossible thing, and the word ultimately meant nothing to the black-haired child.

"Yes," El insisted, a sad smile on his face. "Love is not a fickle thing, as most mortals might think."

"But what does that mean? What _is_ it?" Harry asked, desperate. He didn't know why it was suddenly so critical, but the question burned in him and he fisted his hands in the white robes that El wore, feeling heat surge through him at the contact.

"Love is a god allowing a mortal to lay hands upon him," El intoned, gently grasping Harry's hands when the boy recoiled almost violently from him. His gentle laugh reverberated between them. "It is patience and kindness, selflessness and protectiveness. It is attentiveness and sensitivity. Love is not what you _feel._ It is what you _do._ Do you see?"

"But how can you love me?" Harry whispered, shaking his head. "I am…no one. Nothing."

"Ah, so that is the crux of the matter," El nodded his head, as if he had expected it. He chuckled once again, a low warm sound, and Harry stared at his feet. "Did you think that you are the first to wonder?"

"I don't know," Harry murmured, and El embraced the boy. Nothing could describe the experience. It was like basking in the warmth of the sun under the caress of an autumn breeze. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket during the depths of winter.

"You are a faithful servant," El told him, stepping apart. "Let the rest fall where it will, but never forget that I love you. In time, you will understand. Perhaps you may love me in turn, as your predecessors have. You should count yourself fortunate, for even they did not speak to me as clearly as you now do."

"I want to understand now," Harry whined, immediately flushing at the childish complaint. El didn't admonish him, except to brush a lock of his hair from his face. As his fingers brushed across Harry's scar, Harry felt a distant fear, more like the memory of fear than the thing itself, but an instant later it was gone, and he wondered if it had been his imagination.

"If all wisdom was yours, then what use would this school be to you?"

Harry shrugged. "I hate it here," he replied stubbornly. "I'd be lost without you."

"Ah, but that is life, I think," El replied quietly. "You will not be alone forever. Or did you think that I would abandon my favored champion so early on in his tasks?"

"I'm sorry," Harry apologized, even if he didn't quite know what for.

"Hmm. Do not try to withdraw from me again, my child," El admonished, and there was a warning in his voice despite his gentle countenance.

"Never," Harry swore. He resolved then to trust in his master and teacher, no matter how confused he might become.

"Then that is settled," El concluded, smiling once more. "You should keep working; your casting is sloppy."

Harry raised his wand and weaved an intricate tapestry of brilliant colors in the air, wondering what he could possibly do to improve. It hung suspended before them, an image of El himself, looking down on Earth cradled in his hands. Harry concentrated, and the globe began to spin.


	9. Part 1 Chapter 8

A/N: Figured I'd put a little notice here. This chapter contains explicit descriptions of violence and its results.

Chapter 8

"I don't understand," Harry found himself saying once again as he stood in the center of a sandy arena, under the light of an outlandish purple sky. His dreams had become more crowded as of late. Moat often, he opened his eyes to alien surroundings, with Death standing before him, dressed like a man plucked out of time. Today, he appeared like an ancient Greek fitted in the trappings of a hoplite.

For some time, El had instructed him in various forms of combat from boxing to grappling, but today he was wielding a shield and a long, bronze-shod spear.

El gestured with his hand, and Harry stumbled under the weight of the shield that appeared on his arm. He fumbled with the spear, and only just managed to right himself when the timeless being assaulted him, driving him back under an onslaught of deft jabs and shattering blows with his wide, round shield.

Harry remained unscathed until his back hit the stone wall of the arena. El's shield slammed against him with crushing force, and Harry skirted desperately to the side, dropping his arm to slip past the rim of his taller opponent's shield. In a flash, El's spear slipped between them, scraping neatly across the edge of Harry's shield and piercing the crown of his head. A flash of pain shrouded his vision in darkness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in the middle of the arena once again. El appeared more at ease now, with a small grin on his face, but Harry still did not lower his guard.

"The Greeks used magical wood in their shields and covered them in bronze. The bronze insulates the shield against magic, but even then, most spells are strong enough to pass through the metal unimpeded. If that happens, the wood is engraved specifically to channel the magic into the wielder. If the user is non-magical, the result is a nasty shock, but warlocks used these shields to great effect in magical combat, for spells caught with the shield could be used to supplement their own strength in battle," El lectured.

"The spear, an ubiquitous and versatile weapon, bears many resemblances to the staffs used by ancient wizards in warfare. The spear in your hand channels magic as well as any wand. Although the effects may not be as easy to control, they are amplified."

Harry glanced at his armaments in surprise. He still didn't quite understand what El was getting at, but he nodded his head encouragingly.

"I will teach you how to use these weapons, and others as well," El told him simply.

"It isn't very feasible to use antiquated weapons today, is it?" Harry asked hesitantly.

El merely settled into a combative stance, which Harry attempted to mimic. "You can shrink them, conjure them, transfigure them, disillusion them…surely you can find a way to arm yourself discreetly. Now, let me show you…"

* * *

The light-hearted atmosphere of the Great Hall soured quickly as soon as Professor Quirrel burst through the double doors with a flash of yellow light. The dazed student population looked towards him to find a man that shared few qualities with the defense professor that they had known from class. Standing tall, with his dark robes flowing around him, he appeared every bit the Mage Hunter that his reputation made him out to be.

Harry was not distracted by the man's imposing nature, however. He glimpsed Quirrel's flashing red eyes and shuddered.

With a touch of his wand, Quirrel's voice was amplified until it echoed throughout the hall. Then he spoke, "A troll has broken into the dungeons."

Harry snorted in disbelief. Trolls were too stupid to tell their toes from their fingers, and here Quirrel says that one has broken through the wards and somehow found its way into the dungeons?

Headmaster Dumbledore, however, took the man at his word and began to organize the students. At first, other students had been just as skeptical as Harry, but in the face of Dumbledore's apparent concern, panic took hold of them. Voices rose quickly, and soon it was impossible to make out the headmaster's instructions.

Harry hadn't been paying attention to him anyway. He was more focused on the ethereal warrior that had appeared before him, outfitted in gleaming bronze armor and wearing a brilliant helm. There were no weapons on his body, but Harry had never seen El so attired outside of his dreams. It made his muscles tense in anticipation of a fight.

"Go to the second floor. Quickly!" El told him. Harry didn't argue, immediately standing to comply. In the chaos that had become the Great Hall, it was a simple matter to slip away. "Arm yourself."

El kept pace with Harry, phasing through walls and other obstacles as a ghost might, watching with unreadable eyes as Harry reached into his robes and withdrew his wand and a small wooden coin. A quick spell murmured between his measured breaths caused the coin to expand, and he stuck it to his arm with a simple charm, making an impromptu shield. He cast a few minor charms on it, strengthening it and reducing its weight, but it wasn't anything like the shields he was used to from his dreams. He rounded the corner, taking the stairs two at a time.

"The troll has caught the scent of another student in the lavatory," El informed him brusquely. "Distract it for as long as you can. Disarm it quickly and keep your distance. Aim for the interior of its mouth or its eyes. Otherwise, use blunt force."

El disappeared, but Harry knew that he was not alone.

Harry nodded, tightened his grip on his chilling black wand, and turned the final corner. He came to a sudden halt when he saw the hulking beast lurching towards him. The bathrooms were roughly half the distance between them, and El informed him that the other student was in the girl's lavatory.

His heart skipped a beat as he assessed his opponent. It stood roughly eight feet tall, with broad, muscular shoulders and dark gray skin. Harry knew that its hide was both thick and resistant to most magic. Its face was square and seemed to sprout seamlessly from its bulging neck. A huge, gnarled club was clutched in its calloused right fist, and it had two dark, beady eyes set near each other above an upturned, wet nose. The moment it saw the dark-haired student at the end of the hall, it gave an ear-splitting roar and increased its pace.

 _I've got its attention now,_ Harry thought, taking aim. The troll was moving too quickly, so he overturned each of the suits of armor in the corridor with a levitation charm. His magic reacted to his wand rather explosively, and each obstacle clattered explosively into the path of the charging beast. This barely slowed its thoughtless charge. Shaking his head, Harry sloppily transfigured the troll's club into a long roll of cloth. The troll cast it aside after a moment's confusion before renewing its advance.

With less than ten yards between them, Harry unleashed an _incendio._ His wand took the aggressive magic and bucked in his hand before the spell coalesced in a tight, swirling column of green flame and struck the troll in the jaw, parting around its face and curling around the back of its skull. The smell of singed flesh added to the already revolting stench which seemed to cling to the beast's gray skin like fog.

It ducked its head and took a swipe at Harry like it was swatting a fly. The boy back-stepped, and found himself only a single pace away from the wall. His heart seized in his chest as the troll towered above him, and he narrowly avoided a second swing of its meaty fist by diving to the ground between its legs.

Scrambling aside just as a huge, hairy foot cracked the stones where he had laid upon just an instant prior, Harry scampered away and spun around, casting a tickling charm at the troll's back.

Infuriated, the beast spun around and caught the harmless charm in the chest. It gasped, staggering towards the young wizard with an outstretched arm, then began to laugh. Confronted with a murderous, mightily amused troll, Harry snapped off three piercing hexes toward its mouth. Two of them put cuts on its face, and the third dislodged a tooth, but the hexes seemed only to interrupt the effects of the tickling charm rather than causing any significant damage.

Harry desperately cast a magical barrier and raised his makeshift buckler as an unavoidable fist came down. The air flared golden as his magic was torn apart like tissue paper, and Harry was thrown backwards by the impact against his arm. The charm holding the shield to his arm failed when the wood splintered, returning to its original size as the pieces fell to the floor.

His arm throbbed painfully, but Harry hauled himself to his feet, raising his wand again.

Blunt force….

"Ko, ko, ko, ko…" he hissed in a passable imitation as his first duel in Quirrel's class. The striking hex distorted the air around it and shimmered brightly like a bit of a cloud trapped in glass. Each separate spell cut through the air at a speed of eight meters per second, soundless and lethal. The troll took a step and took the first to the chest. This resulted in the sickening _crack_ of bone and a wicked gash tearing open across the left side of the beast's chest. A visible dent remained where the spell had struck. The second spell impacted the troll's forearm as it reflexively shielded itself, and the appendage collapsed on itself as it was knocked aside, suddenly a gruesome combination of twisted muscle and splintered bone. At this point the troll had staggered within striking distance. Just in time to take the third spell in the shoulder, mangling its already ruined arm even further.

Harry saw the professors round the corner behind the troll, and he continued to cast. He could feel his strength fleeing his body as magic poured through his wand in a near continuous stream of murderous energy, but the troll was continuing to swallow the spells and the pain, indefatigable in its advance. Blood fell to the floor in great drops, smacking against the stones. The troll raised its good arm, preparing for what surely would have been a fatal blow, only for a single fortuitous hex to make a ruin of its jaw. A meaty squelch interrupted Harry's casting as blood and shards of bone splattered across the castle walls. Three more hexes crushed the troll's neck and skull immediately, blasting gore onto the stones at the feet of the frantic Hogwarts Faculty in a deluge of sickening flesh.

The headless troll staggered back, teetered momentarily, and fell tremendously to the stone floor. Harry dropped his wand and sagged against the wall, suddenly feeling the pain in his arm.

Silence descended upon the hallway. El materialized above the deceased troll and gave Harry a slow nod before fading away once again, but that was enough for the raven-haired boy to straighten up, standing proud in the face of the professors, who were beginning to recover from their shock.

"Mr. Potter!" deputy Headmistress McGonagall exclaimed, stepping gingerly around the lifeless troll. Her nose wrinkled in slight disgust, but Harry was impressed by her stoicism in the face of the gruesome sight. Snape and Dumbledore were likewise unaffected, but Pomona Sprout had turned away with one trembling hand held over her mouth. Professor McGonagall scanned her student quickly with her eyes. "Are you hurt?"

"Yes," Harry told her, wincing as a particularly savage wave of pain emanated from his arm. "The troll hit my arm. I think its broken."

"Merlin's beard!" Her eyes grew wide.

Harry mistakenly glanced down. He saw his arm bent at an angle, with a spur of crimson-stained bone sticking from unnaturally stretched skin, and at once a crippling lance of agony cut through him like a blade of ice dragging through his veins. The professor steadied the suddenly dizzy student with a single hand upon his shoulder, "Can you walk? We have to get you to Madam Pomfrey's."

Harry nodded. "There is a student in the girl's lavatory," he managed to say. The head of Gryffindor House nodded briskly and ushered Harry immediately to Madam Pomfrey's office.

The moment the school nurse laid eyes upon his arm, Harry was sat upon a bed and fed a pain-relief potion. It took the edge off, but Harry was intimately aware of every slight movement in his injured limb, which made the process of setting the bone quite unpleasant. The spells Madam Pomfrey used appeared to have no sympathy, and seized his arm tightly. Then it commenced the task of pulling it briskly into its proper place. This was by far the most painful thing that Harry had ever experienced, far beyond even the most brutal of Dudley's beatings.

He nearly blacked out, in fact.

Swaying dangerously, he was laid back against the pillows by Madam Pomfrey, who set another potion vial against his lips, speaking quietly to him as her wand moved independently of the steady hand upon his chest. Several times, Harry felt movement in his arm, but nothing came near to the discomfort of the initial setting. When she was done, Harry was covered with a sheen of sweat and his eyes were beginning to droop closed of their own accord.

Professor McGonagall had watched the whole thing with a concerned expression on her face. She stepped forward, and Harry regarded her wearily. "Can you tell me what you were doing on the second floor when you encountered the troll?"

"A student was in the lavatory there," Harry explained, "The staff wouldn't have arrived in time. I rushed there from the great hall to distract the troll."

The professor's expression ranged from extremely proud to furious so quickly that Harry was worried she might have strained the muscles in her face. "How did you know about the student on the second floor?"

Harry cursed himself silently and shook his head. He was too wiped out to think of a suitable explanation… "It felt like the right thing to do."

"You could have been killed!" the professor exclaimed incredulously.

Harry winced, knowing that it was a weak explanation. Were he an older student, he was sure she would have caught his lie, but as things stood, it seemed that she was willing to believe in youthful foolhardiness. "I didn't die," he pointed out evenly.

"Incredibly," McGonagall muttered. "Can you tell me what happened with the troll?"

"I saw it at the end of the hall and tried to slow it down by levitating the armor suits. When that didn't work I transfigured its club into cloth," Harry explained. He paused for a tired yawn, and his body helpfully informed him that he needed rest by suddenly beginning to ache deeply and insistently. "When it was close enough, I used _incendio_ , but it didn't seem to bother it too much. I was cornered, so I dove between its legs and cast a tickling charm. When its mouth was open I tried piercing hexes, but my aim was off. As it approached I cast striking hexes, and you saw the rest."

McGonagall gazed at him in silent shock for several long seconds. "I hope you realize that there are some sixth and seventh year students that could not have done what you did today," she told him seriously. "Even if the spells you used were elementary, I am extremely impressed with your quick thinking. However, if I hear about you doing anything so boneheaded as this again, so help me, Mr. Potter…"

She sighed and shook her head. "Rest now. Headmaster Dumbledore will probably want to speak with you later."

With a final inscrutable look, the deputy headmistress departed and Harry laid his head against the pillows. He was asleep almost before his eyes dropped closed.


	10. Part 1 Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"Why did you leave the Great Hall when I explicitly commanded the students to remain in their seats?" Headmaster Dumbledore asked quietly.

 _Do not look into his eyes…_ Death whispered. Harry stared intently at the headmaster's nose.

"I knew I had to go to the second floor, sir," Harry replied, sticking to his story. "It felt like the right thing to do."

Dumbledore frowned, and Harry immediately knew that the lie had been spotted. "I see," he said in a way that meant 'I'm letting it slide…for now.' "And when you saw the troll, why didn't you run?"

"There was someone in the lavatory."

"Ah, yes. Ms. Granger, I understand," Dumbledore said. He paused significantly. "How did you know that she was in the bathroom when you confronted the troll?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't know," he lied.

For a moment, they simply looked at each other, and Harry could see that the headmaster was frustrated with his responses. Was it so unbelievable that one boy could have done the unexplainable, given the many curiosities of magic?

The old man affected a smile and patted Harry's hand which laid atop the covers of his hospital bed. "I'm proud of you for going to such lengths to protect a nameless peer, but I feel I must caution you against similarly brash decisions in the future. Things could have ended tragically yesterday, as I'm sure you know."

Harry frowned. "Yes, sir. It would have been terrible if the troll had found Ms. Granger," he replied, quietly stubborn.

"Can you tell me what happened with the troll? I saw just as well as the rest of the staff how your effective striking hexes ended the poor beast, but I admit I find myself curious as to how a first-year student could have held his own against such a dangerous creature."

Harry shrugged. "I told Professor McGonagall."

"Forgive an old man his memory, my boy," Dumbledore said, stroking his beard. "Would you mind repeating yourself?"

"Well, I tried to slow it down by levitating the suits of armor, but it didn't help. I transfigured its club to cloth and cast an _incendio_ when it was close enough, but its hide was too thick…" he repeated what he had told McGonagall while Dumbledore nodded his head.

When he was finished, Dumbledore shook his head slowly. "Quite incredible. In fact, were it not for the fact that I have personally witnessed a few of your spellcasting sessions by the lake from the window in my office, I would find it unbelievable."

"My spells were mostly ineffective until the very end," Harry argued. "Anybody could have done it."

"Ah, but it takes a lot of effort to levitate such an item such as a suit of armor at the distances you described. Transfiguring a large mass like the club is also a daunting task for most wizards and witches in Britain, albeit for a different reason. Finally, as the faculty all witnessed in person, your striking hexes were cast accurately, swiftly, and flawlessly, with quite dramatic results," Dumbledore countered. "Adult wizards who have dabbled in dueling could perhaps have replicated your performance, but for a student, well…that is another matter. Especially one who is only twelve-years old and in his first year at Hogwarts."

"Oh," was Harry's articulate response.

"Can you explain to me how it is that you have found yourself so far ahead of your year-mates, Mr. Potter? I understand that you discovered magic for the first time when Professor McGonagall visited you on Privet Drive."

Harry gnawed his bottom lip and mistakenly glanced at the Headmaster's sky-blue eyes. Immediately, he felt a knot form between his eyebrows, and he found it nearly impossible to break the headmaster's gaze. After a short internal struggle, he wrenched his eyes away and stared at his bony fingers. "I spend a lot of time studying magic," he answered.

"All of your professors are impressed with your dedication," Dumbledore agreed, suddenly relaxed and friendly. Harry wondered what it was that had set him at ease. "But the proficiency you displayed goes beyond the curriculum of your courses. I know that Professor Quirrel has not taught the flame charm or the striking hex in his class, even if he has demonstrated them."

 _He looked into your mind,_ Death explained. _That is why you should avoid meeting his eyes. I have managed to keep my existence a secret from him, but there will be inconsistencies in your memories that he will notice if he is given enough time to study them._

Eventually, Harry sighed, getting a headache from trying to think about his mind-reading headmaster as well as coming up with a suitable explanation for his behavior.

"Voldemort killed my parents, headmaster," he said slowly. "I was attacked in the corridors in my first few weeks at school. It seemed to me that the most important thing to learn at Hogwarts was the ability to protect myself, considering the many dangers that seem to await me in the magical world."

The best lies contain a bit of the truth, and nothing that Harry had said was false. He didn't know why it was necessary to hide his relationship with El, but something indicated to him that the headmaster would not have reacted well to the news that Harry was being tutored by an invisible man who sometimes goes by the moniker Death, among a plethora of other equally daunting titles.

"I see," Dumbledore said, and Harry saw an expression of sadness on the man's features. "You are mature beyond your years, my boy."

Harry shrugged, having nothing to say in response.

"Ms. Granger wanted to thank you in person for coming so valiantly to her defense. Shall I send her in?" Dumbledore asked, rising from his conjured chair and dispelling it with a negligent wave of his hand. The casual display of mastery impressed Harry, and he resolved to investigate the limits of silent, wandless magic later.

"Of course."

When the headmaster was gone, Harry ran his hands through his hair and sighed through his nose. An insistent itch had manifested itself in his arm, but it didn't appear to be something that he could ease, no matter how he massaged the site of his injury. It was still somewhat numb, but Madam Pomfrey assured him that there was little he could do to hurt it while it was healing, aside from breaking it once again.

Harry saw Hermione Granger, the girl that had spoken with him on the train, step gingerly into the hospital wing, he greeted her with a slight wave of his hand.

"Hello."

"Hi," the girl returned, slowly shuffling up to the side of his bed. Her hands were tangled together with the front of her robes, and she seemed to be looking for injuries with her eyes.

"I'm fine," he assured her, lifting his arm as evidence. "Madam Pomfrey fixed me right up."

"Oh." The skin around her eyes tightened. It seemed that the fact that he had needed fixing in the first place distressed her. "Well, I wanted to thank you for…well, saving my life, I suppose. I, um…saw the troll in the corridor…"

Harry winced. "Yes, well, it was the thing to do," he said lamely. "I wasn't going to leave and let the troll at you."

"It was all my fault!" she exclaimed miserably, pleading with her suddenly teary eyes. "It was just…well, I couldn't go down to the Great Hall after the things Ron said..."

Harry shook his head. "You couldn't have known about the troll," he assured her, "but you shouldn't let the things people say bother you."

"Well, you certainly don't," she said, and Harry practically saw her biting her tongue as the words left her mouth. She rushed on, "I didn't mean it in a bad way! It's just..."

"No, I understand," Harry waved her embarrassment aside. He glanced at the sunlight streaming through the window.

"Well, it's just the things that they say about you! I don't know how you can stand it," Hermione explained anyway. Harry hummed thoughtfully and closed his eyes.

"The things that they say do not define me," Harry told her seriously. "I am who I am, and I will be who I will be, regardless of the scorn or affection of others."

She blinked owlishly at him. "That's…I wish I could live that way," she said quietly.

"What's stopping you?"

She bit her lip and shook her head. "It's not that simple," she lamented, and Harry let the topic go. One day, perhaps, she would understand. "How…if you don't mind, I mean…how did you do _that_ to the troll?"

Harry shrugged and related his actions to her. She had already seen the troll, so he figured that it couldn't hurt. It appeared that he was wrong, however, because she became progressively paler as he spoke, especially when he came to the part where his arm was broken.

"My god, Harry!" she whispered when he had finished. "Why would you do that for _me_?"

Harry chuckled. "I didn't know it was you at the time." Seeing that this didn't appear to set her at ease, he continued. "Think of it this way: if I had the ability to save someone from grievous injury or death and chose not to, what kind of person would that make me?"

"But you could have died!" she exclaimed, somewhat loudly.

Harry sighed. "Yes, I am aware. I didn't. What use is there in dwelling on the things that didn't happen?"

Shaking her head, she reached out and grasped his hand in both of her own. "Thank you," she said once again, seeming unable to find words enough to express what she was feeling.

"Don't be a stranger, Granger," Harry said lightly as she let go of his hand. She grinned and nodded brightly before leaving him to the care of Madam Pomfrey.

* * *

As usual, no matter the attempts by the school faculty to keep the incident with the troll a secret, the rumor-mill of Hogwarts worked tirelessly to frustrate them. Unfortunately, Harry Potter's courageous defeat of the monstrous creature quickly became the hottest subject of discussion throughout the school, and the library became his only remaining safe haven as Madam Pince ruled her domain with an iron fist and blazing eyes. No one could pester him there, not while she stood vigil behind her stack of parchment.

"Quirinus Quirrel allowed the troll into the castle on purpose," El informed Harry the next time he found himself hiding in the library, much to the disappointment of the many curious students who had been hounding him to drag the full story kicking and screaming from his lips. The ethereal being was seating on the table beside Harry's books, wearing Death's garb. His pale skin and dark eyes were what Harry most often associated with his mentor, and it was a small comfort to him.

"Why would he do that?" Harry asked, taking El at his word.

"Hmm, what fun would it be if I told you?" El replied, and the teasing statement seemed odd coming from the mouth of Death. Harry mock-glared at his master.

"What if he does something worse next time?" Harry argued.

El chuckled. "What would you do about it even if I told you?"

Exasperated, the raven-haired boy closed his book and sat back with his arms crossed. "I don't know! Report him, maybe?"

"Who are you talking to?"

Harry started at the interruption and glanced to the side to see Hermione with her satchel slung over one shoulder, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

He glanced back, and saw that Death watching him with an entirely ridiculous expression of wry amusement on his normally somber features.

"Well, nobody," he hedged.

"Talking to yourself is a bad habit," Granger chided. He shifted her weight for a moment as the words seemed to tangle in the air between them. "Do you mind if I join you?"

Harry shrugged, so she sat down quickly, as if she were afraid he might retract his tacit approval. A sort of pregnant pause settled between them, before Harry blurted out the first thing that came to mind, desperate for _something_ to say.

"I think Quirrel _let_ the troll into the dungeon." As soon as he said it he felt the urge to slam his head against the desk. This would inevitably lead to an argument and he didn't have any evidence…

"Professor Quirrel?" Hermione clarified, looking at once appalled and confused. Harry wondered if it had been a wise idea to tell girl who had nearly been hunted down by the troll his suspicions. Yet another reason why this was a bad idea.

"Yes. I just don't know why," Harry explained anyway. He couldn't leave off now that he'd already started.

"Why do you think that?" Hermione asked incredulously. "He's a professor!"

Dreadfully aware of Madam Pince's baleful gaze, Harry frantically gestured for Hermione to calm down. Conveniently, this gave him a moment to think of a reasonable response.

"Does that make him a saint? Besides, no troll could be smart enough to unearth a hidden passage to the dungeons. I smell a rat."

"You're ridiculous," Hermione dismissed. "You can't just accuse people of crimes without evidence."

"Do you think he's just a sadist?" Harry ignored Hermione's entirely predictable response. "I think the whole thing with Nott was intentional that first week…"

Hermione was momentarily confused, but it appeared that the gossips of Hogwarts had done its job adequately; she figured out what he was talking about after a short moment's thought. "No!" she refuted. "He's a perfectly decent fellow. With his reputation, he couldn't be anything less."

"Ah, but if you spend a lifetime hunting monsters, what's stopping you from becoming a monster yourself?" Harry postulated quietly, shuddering as his mind applied that statement to his own goals of eradicating Tom Riddle. "Anyway, it's probably not simple sadism. It never is."

Whatever Hermione was going to say was cut off abruptly as she contemplated his statement. Still, she shook her head, and her bushy mane wagged with it. "It's ludicrous!" she exclaimed, rather too loudly for the library. "He wouldn't. Not a professor."

"How does that factor into it? Maybe he came to Hogwarts because of whatever Dumbledore's got up there on the third floor," Harry argued, suddenly feeling confident in his theory. "I didn't see him after he made the announcement. What better time to check out Dumbledore's mysterious Third Floor death-trap? In fact, the troll was originally in the dungeons, so all the professors would have been on the opposite side of the castle."

"But it ended up on the second floor," Hermione pointed out. "I can't believe we're even discussing this. I came over here to do my homework!"

"Well, do as you like," Harry grouched, opening his book once again and dropping the whole issue. His mind didn't stop turning the issue over, however, and the longer he thought about it the more outlandish his theories became.


	11. Part 1 Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Harry gasped in pain as El's sword cut cleanly through muscle and bone, severing his sword-arm from his body at the elbow. His own weapon clattered uselessly to the ground in a shower of blood, and Harry desperately cast a banisher with his left hand, only for El to catch the spell on his own darkened length of wood, running his student through the chest with his sword in the same motion.

Harry had gotten used to dying in dreams, but he would never acclimate to the expressionless features of his master's face whenever they fought. It was as if the primordial being was afraid of showing emotion, opting instead to show a disconcerting lack of feeling, and nothing terrified Harry more than staring into the unfeeling eyes of a god as the life ebbed from his body.

When the dream reset, he was holding his sword in his right hand and his wand in the other. El had told him this was in keeping with a fifteenth or fourteenth century wizard-warrior. The sword was forged specially to deflect certain spells, but it didn't provide anywhere near the level of protection as the Greek shield. Casting with the left hand was a difficult skill to learn. In short, Harry despised everything about this particular style.

It relied heavily on mobility and deception, skills which Harry lacked.

"I think Quirrel was scouting the third floor," Harry said, hoping to distract El from their training. Sure enough, the timeless being paused.

"Oh?"

Harry figured it was too much to hope that his theory would be validated. "Dumbledore said that a painful death awaited anyone who went there, and I think that he's hiding something on the third floor. Whatever it is, Quirrel wants it. He used the troll as a distraction."

"It's well-reasoned, but you have no evidence," El pointed out. "All you have is guesswork."

"But is it right?" Harry pressed.

Eyes dancing with mirth, El raised his sword. "I don't know. Is it?"

Their blades came together with a _clang,_ and Harry resigned himself to another painful death. He almost lasted a full thirty seconds this time.

* * *

Christmas Break was long and boring. It allowed a lot of time for Harry to study in the library or practice spellcasting in the snow, but the days started to blend together one after the other. The entire time, Harry couldn't get the third floor corridor out of his head. It niggled at him like an untouchable itch, consuming his every spare thought. His theories were growing more and more outlandish with every passing moment, and in short order Harry was beginning to consider such silliness as Dumbledore locking away the secret to immortality behind a gauntlet of traps.

He wasn't sure what to make of the whole ordeal, and he wasn't about to ask one of the professors. At least, it hadn't been his intention when he first started contemplating the mystery, but as time wore on his curiosity became unbearable.

So, when he found Professor McGonagall in the corridors on the way to the library his strained reasoning determined it couldn't hurt to ask, as long as he was careful to phrase his question innocuously.

"Professor? Why was Dumbledore so insistent about the third floor corridor at the start of the term?"

She halted in place and blinked at him. "It's nothing to concern yourself with, Mr. Potter."

"A painful and gruesome death?" Harry pressed. "It seems pretty concerning."

She sighed. "The headmaster has his quirks," she said cryptically. "It's best not to ask too many questions."

With that, she nodded and continued on her way. Harry had a feeling that she had answered similar questions many times in the past, and after thinking about her words he came to the conclusion that she had carefully phrased everything to avoid saying anything at all about the actual nature of the corridor. Except to state that it was Dumbledore's idea, which was a neat way of avoiding responsibility while deflecting the original line of questioning.

Frustrated, he slumped into his usual seat in the library and opened another of his many spell-books. He only read a few sentences before his mind wandered back to the conundrum of the third-floor, and it was then, in the comforting stillness of the Hogwarts library that Harry resolved to explore it in person.

It wouldn't do to get himself caught, however, and since he was one of the only students in the castle at the moment he would have to wait for break to end, allowing the number of suspects to increase. Still, he could spend time measuring the security, since he would have to determine if the faculty regularly patrolled the area. If they did, it would be best to make out a schedule of their movements.

Days passed in tense anticipation as Harry contemplated the issue, and it wasn't until Christmas day that a solution presented itself.

There, on his bed, laid a simple, unmarked package. Immediately suspicious, Harry cast a battery of detection charms, and was startled in the midst of his work by Death manifesting above him as an incorporeal figure.

"It is safe," he said, peering intently at Harry as the boy dropped his wand-arm. Death wafted like a leaf on an autumn breeze to hang suspended in the air beside the bed. Cautiously, the raven-haired boy hefted the package and pried it open, revealing a shimmering, silky fabric with a letter placed gently in the folds. Ignoring the parchment in favor of drawing the cloth from the box, Harry beheld a magnificent cloak with a notably transient quality about it. As the cloth rippled like water, it seemed to phase in and out of view, all save for the clasp, which had a curious triangular sigil embossed upon tarnished silver. The clasp was an artistic variation of a simple hook-and-loop, with long tendrils of metal meshing neatly together to give the impression of skeletal hands clasped tightly together.

As he held the cloak, Harry felt the strangest sense of familiarity, and when he glanced questioningly to Death, he realized why. The same design featured prominently in the garb of the primordial being himself.

"Yes," Death answered the unspoken question. "That is one of my cloaks."

Harry reverently brought the fabric to his face and touched it to his cheek. He felt the familiar chill that always accompanied the touch of Death and shuddered. "Ignotus'?"

"Indeed," Death replied. "When he passed the talisman to his son, it became an heirloom of the family. As the years turned to decades, and decades turned to centuries, the name changed from Peverell to Potter. Now, it has come to you."

"A deathly hallow," Harry repeated dully, shrugging the cloak about his shoulders without conscious thought. As the clasp closed around his neck of its own accord, Harry suddenly felt the warmth flee from him in a rush, like he had been standing outside in the stiff winter gale, and he clenched his fists in a futile attempt to preserve the warmth in his fingers.

Death touched the ground and formed into a tangible figure, allowing his hood to fall about his neck like dancing shadows. "The chill will pass, in time. The longer you wear it, the more attuned with it you will become. You should make it a point never to unfasten the clasp at your neck."

Glancing down at his invisible torso, Harry raised an eyebrow. "I don't think that my professor's would appreciate an invisible student. And how about showering, for that matter?"

"Yes, well, it would be of rather limited utility if it was invisible at all times, wouldn't it?" Death chided. "My talismans are not simply inanimate objects; they interact with you mind, body, and soul. Work with it, and it will work with you."

"What does that even mean?" Harry whined, gesturing wildly with invisible arms.

It was an action that was best suited to a boy of Harry's age, unburdened by Fate and free from obligation. No matter how hard Harry worked to become a champion worthy of El's personal tutelage, he was still young, and it was in these fleeting moments that Death caught a glimpse of the carefree child Harry should have been, and he laughed.

"Like all magic, the cloak is intent-based. If you wish to be visible to others or to become intangible, simply provide an ample mental suggestion, and the talisman will respond. Of the three Hallows, this is the subtlest. When you hold Antioch's Bane in your hand, you will see more clearly what I mean."

"When…" Harry mumbled, shaking his head at the reminder that Death intended for him to master all three of the Deathly Hallows. A shudder danced down his spine, unrelated to the biting chill of the cloak. Still, he focused on the feel of the fabric and willed it to be tangible. He watched in awe as his body faded gently back into view. The cloak's fabric had lost its intangible appearance, taking on the attributes of unassuming black cloth. Harry noticed that it was difficult to focus on any single attribute of the cloak even in this mundane form.

As he experimented with its abilities, the cloak vacillated in and out of view, along with Harry's legs, although it became immediately apparent that the cloak could hide itself without obscuring the boy underneath.

Death laid his hands on Harry's shoulders. "The cloak is a powerful artifact. It hides you entirely, in all ways. If you do not wish to be seen, you will be unseen. Your mind is likewise protected while the cloak is clasped about your neck. Even the intricacies of soul-magic are unable to pierce the shroud."

"The story says that it hid Ignotus from Death," Harry murmured, and Death laughed, peering at him with his fathomless eyes.

"Do you think that there is anywhere you might go where I cannot find you?" he asked gently. Harry shuddered once again as a mixture of affection and fear tangled in the pit of his stomach. "Truly, while you wear that cloak, you are closer to me than ever. It is not simply an enchanted cut of fabric, but rather a vessel which contains an aspect of myself. Why do you think it imparts a curse to those who wear it without my favor?"

Harry grinned, inexplicably pleased. He felt somewhat warmer, now, than when he had first shrugged the cloak over his head.

"It will help you with your plans, will it not?" Death asked, and Harry blinked.

"You know about that?" Harry asked, dumbly. Of course Death knew about the third floor. He was the one that had put him on Professor Quirrel's trail.

Death cupped Harry's cheek. "Do be careful, my child."

Harry bit his lip and nodded his head. "I should keep the cloak's true nature a secret?"

"But of course. Ignotus was wise to keep his own counsel about the talisman until the day that he died," Death replied. He paused, and glanced at the door. "The headmaster approaches. I would advise you not to allow him knowledge of your mastery over my Hallow."

Harry removed the cloak, and it reverted to shimmering silver. He was standing alone with the brilliant fabric in his hands when the dormitory door opened and Dumbledore stepped inside. Harry greeted him and lowered his arms.

"I see you've gotten my little gift," Dumbledore noted, smiling warmly. Harry tried not to scowl at the reference to Death's talisman as _Dumbledore's_ gift _._ If he had actually read the parchment, it wouldn't' have come as a surprise…

"I understand it was my father's," Harry said neutrally. When the headmaster nodded, Harry cocked his head. "How did you end up with it?"

Dumbledore's smile faltered slightly. "Your father graciously allowed me to conduct some research on the cloak towards the end of the war," he explained, and Harry's eyes narrowed sharply.

Was his father such a fool, to give up the cloak which might have saved his life, or at least the lives of his wife and child? Still, he had nothing else to say, so he set the cloak down on the bed. "Was there something you wanted, Headmaster?"

"Other than to wish you a happy Christmas, I wanted to tell you that the matter of your guardianship has been handled. The whole thing nearly went before the wizengamot, but I managed to convince them to handle the matter quietly," Dumbledore said. Harry raised his eyebrow.

"Why would a governing body such as the Wizengamot care for a child custody hearing?"

The aged man's eyes twinkled brightly. "Well, if you put your mind to it, I'm sure you could figure it out. Besides the fact that the Potters are an old and respected family in Britain, there is a law which will be voted on in the coming months regarding the rights of muggles in the eyes of the wizarding world. The supporters of the law would have suffered dramatically if the news that the Boy-Who-Lived was mistreated by his muggle relatives was allowed to reach the general public."

"I take it the opponents of the bill invested time and money to make the issue of my custody as much of a scandal as possible," Harry guessed. It sounded like something straight from the books that he spent his time absorbing in the library.

"Quite," Dumbledore agreed.

Harry figured such a debacle would have negatively affected the headmaster as well, since he must have played a role in the Potter scion's placement at the Dursley's in the first place. Therefore, his efforts to reduce the scandal could be seen as self-serving, or as altruistic, depending on whether or not he intended to support the rights of muggles or if he was simply covering his own arse.

"So, I have a new family, then?" Harry asked blithely, taking the envelope from the box and passing his eyes over its contents before casting it aside.

"The Tonks family volunteered. Some unsavory elements of the wizengamot supported the Travers family, which led to a heated debate," Dumbledore explained, somewhat obliquely. "You might have met Nymphadora Tonks, a sixth-year student in Hufflepuff."

"I can't say that I have," Harry brushed the topic aside. "My parents did not leave a Last Will and Testament? Surely they made arrangements for my care, considering the dangerous times in which they lived."

Dumbledore was silent for a long moment, and Harry noticed his congenial demeanor had frozen somewhat. "The Potter Will was sealed until you reach the age of fifteen, which is the age of majority for the last male scion of a wizarding family," Dumbledore answered shortly.

"Why was it sealed?" Harry asked. It was impossible to gauge the headmaster's expression without meeting the man's eyes…

Eventually, the answer came, spoken slowly, as if Dumbledore was carefully considering every word. "Let us say that the decisions made towards the end of the war were made in haste, although not without due consideration. Your placement at the Dursley's was covert by necessity, as there were many enemies still abroad that would have delighted at the chance to have revenge upon the vanquisher of their dark lord. In order to obscure your whereabouts and to avoid painting targets on the backs of those who were named as your caretakers, the Will was sealed. If it had been executed properly, then its contents would have been publicly available."

Harry nodded slowly. He hadn't been alive at the time, so couldn't make a judgement about the severity of the war as Dumbledore described it, but it seemed somewhat convenient. Especially considering the fact that the Will had been sealed for so long. As it was, it seemed that Dumbledore would determine his guardians up until his majority, when it was no longer necessary, regardless of the provisions in the Potter Will.

"When will I meet them, then?" he asked, reluctantly curious about the family that had agreed to take in a child-celebrity, despite the troubles and responsibilities associated with the task.

"They wanted to see you for Christmas, but there were some concerns about security. As things stand, their house will have new wards placed by the time school is out for the summer," Dumbledore explained. "I would encourage you to write to them, if you don't want to wait so long. Or seek out Miss Tonks when she returns to school."

After a further exchange of pleasantries, Dumbledore took his leave and Harry shrugged the cloak about his shoulders once again, relishing the comforting cold of Death.


	12. Part 1 Chapter 11

Chapter 11

It was nearly impossible to sit quietly in Professor Quirrel's class, under his intense scrutiny, day after day. The cloak afforded him the luxury of meeting the professor's eyes defiantly as often as possible, and it seemed to irritate the pale man endlessly that he could no longer romp unrestricted through the raven-haired Slytherin's head. Harry had noticed that Dumbledore and Snape both appeared similarly frustrated, and he took secret pleasure in meeting their eyes at every opportunity.

It was probably unwise of him to flaunt his newfound ability to rebuff mental intrusion, but Harry could hardly help himself. It wasn't like they could ask him about it, since it was illegal to intrude on the minds of the unwilling anyway.

Hermione continued to study with him, which was a source of constant annoyance and rather reluctant enjoyment. She was constantly badgering him about schoolwork and assignments and had a nasty habit of talking down to him as if she was Morgana reincarnated, who knew the ins and outs of every branch of modern magic like the back of her hand. Still, it allowed him the dubious pleasure of correcting her whenever the opportunity arose, and her rather astonished expression every time she saw the title of his latest textbook never ceased to amuse.

She seemed to think that he was pretending to learn the magic from the books he read, since it was impossible to her that one of her peers was so far ahead of her in every branch of practical magic, and Harry didn't bother to refute her silent accusations. She was helpful enough, whenever her rather unique perspective could provide new insight into a problem, but Harry could definitely understand where Ron Weasley was coming from when he called the girl insufferable.

In short, there was only a certain amount of Miss Granger's company that Harry could withstand. He found solitude to be much preferable, in spite of El's continued insistence that loneliness would eventually catch up with him.

Every night, Harry used Death's cloak to lurk on the third floor corridor, at the top of the staircase where a sort of atrium was formed in the castle's central keep. A single locked door stood between the main stairwell of Hogwarts and the apparent danger of the third floor.

Harry bided his time, growing stronger in mind, body, and magic, noting every person that so much as glanced at the dais of the third floor, until he finally found something of interest to observe.

Professor Snape was standing outside the door at an unexpected time—he usually took the post at night, between the hours of midnight and two o'clock. Harry only stayed up through the night once, and it was then that he discovered no guard stationed there between two and five in the morning. Curiously enough, the locking spell that Snape put on the door as he left was stronger than the usual, and wore off by the time the first professor took his post the next morning.

Entering the corridor while no one was stationed at the door would require overcoming the potions master's rather impressive locking charm, something that Harry could not do. Any other time would require sneaking past the guard.

Still, it was only ten o'clock, and Snape was there, while Flitwick, the usual watcher, was nowhere to be found. The faculty was not very consistent in their hours, which was understandable considering the amount of work that they had to do outside of guarding Dumbledore's pet corridor, but it made predicting their movements nigh impossible, much to Harry's mounting frustration.

Harry was surprised to see Professor Quirrel crest the top of the steps, pausing to glance at the dark form of Professor Snape before sweeping towards the door.

"You can't go in there," Snape interrupted him, gliding smoothly to intersect his colleague.

Quirrel stopped and regarded the other man coldly. "Do you really think that you could stop me, Severus? Or have you forgotten the reason why _I_ am the master, and you my servant."

Harry blinked, trying and failing to understand what the defense professor was saying.

"The headmaster knows that I am the one on guard tonight," Snape explained patiently, like he was speaking to a child. "Were anything to happen to the stone, my own loyalty would be questioned."

"I grow weary of these games," Quirrel replied, darkly. "Allow me to pass. This ends tonight."

"I will neglect to place my usual locking charm in place when I leave," Snape allowed at long last, eying his colleague with baleful eyes. "Provided that you destroy the door when you pass. Dumbledore doesn't return until tomorrow evening; a few hours matters not."

Quirrel was silent for a moment, before he scoffed. "Fine," he hissed. "But know this; if I so much as stumble on my way to the stone, _you_ will pay in blood for the delay."

"Of course," Snape retorted, flinching away from the other man as his eyes flashed crimson. Quirrel allowed his eyes to crawl across the dais of the third floor, and Harry saw in his face the demons that El had spoken of so long ago, when he had sat in detention before this same man.

With a final scoff, Quirrel retreated, and Snape returned shakily to his post, leaving Harry to make an important decision:

What should he do with the information he had gathered here tonight?

* * *

Later, he sat awake on his bed, watching the second hand of the clock at his bedside table. El stood before him, dressed in white robes, watching him in silence with kind golden eyes. Harry glanced at the other slumbering occupants of his dorm, boys who might as well have been nameless for all the interaction that Harry had with them. When they weren't actively avoiding him, they were giving him the cold-shoulder. He cast an ancient muffling charm and spoke in hushed tones.

"Surely Dumbledore set the third floor as a trap. This stone must be an artefact of some kind," he began. "It only remains to see how long it takes Dumbledore to return from the ICW once his trap is sprung. Will he arrive in time?"

El raised an eyebrow as his servant chewed his lips anxiously.

"I could try to delay Quirrel," Harry said, nodding. "Am I prepared to face a fully grown wizard?"

"No," El replied bluntly. "If you took him by surprise, there would be a chance, but in direct conflict you are at a sizable disadvantage. Not only because of your size, but also because of your relatively small reserves of magic and your inexperience."

"Do you think I should try and stop him?" Harry asked, glancing once more at the clock. One hour left.

"It is your decision," El answered him. "I shall neither command you to go or to stay. I can tell you that the stone you mentioned is, in fact, the artifact known as the Philosopher's Stone. It is yet another abomination that those who have been gifted with magic have created in the futile search for immortality."

"So you're saying that Dumbledore actually _does_ have the secret to immortality secreted away in the school?" Harry asked rhetorically, shaking his head in wonderment.

"From a certain point of view," El replied quietly. "If you decide to face Quirrel, you should make an attempt to destroy the stone as well."

"Wouldn't that kill Mr. Flamel?"

"Eventually," El allowed. Harry frowned deeply and bit his lip.

"If I go and Quirrel kills me…"

El leaned down to look directly into his young champion's eyes. "Should you perish; I shall restore your form. I cannot guarantee that your body will remain entirely whole, or even that your return would come quickly, but you would live once more."

Harry nodded slowly. "The worst that could happen is my own death and Quirrel's success in spite of my efforts," he said, chuckling to himself at the absurdity of the statement.

"You are not afraid to die?" El asked, and Harry knew that the omniscient being already knew his answer.

"With a friend like Death coming for me, why should I be? I think I'll go. The risk is great, but Dumbledore might not come quickly enough to stop Quirrel from succeeding…"

At this, El reached out. "I will tell you this: if you go to confront Quirrel, you will bear the marks of the confrontation for the rest of your days."

"Scars?" Harry whispered, brushing a thumb across the damnable scar on his forehead. Still, his resolve was not shaken. He didn't know if it was foolishness or bravery that compelled him to commit, but he found words forming almost without thought, "I am not afraid."

"Then go," El said, his face unreadable. "I will be with you."

Harry went.

* * *

Standing in the face of the towering Cerberus, Harry wondered once again at the ridiculous notion of hiding the Philosopher's Stone in a school. Surely, Dumbledore was intelligent enough to know that setting a trap for the Dark Lord would mean considerable danger to the students in the school. Either he cared more for whatever he hoped to gain by catching one of the Dark Lord's servants in this trap than his responsibilities as headmaster, or he was very confident in his ability to monitor the potential threat while it was within the school wards.

Since he was currently hundreds of miles away, leaving Quirrel _and_ Snape free reign of the school, Harry was inclined to believe that Dumbledore really must not care overly much for his students. That, or he deemed whatever danger they might face as a necessary sacrifice.

There was a trapdoor near to the place where the Cerberus sat, which was presumably the entrance to whatever defenses Dumbledore had set up around the Stone, but Harry didn't dare to operate the latch. He might have been entirely obscured from the beast's senses, but it would notice the movement of the trapdoor and the sound of the hinges in the total silence of the hall. The only company Harry had while he waited was the measured breathing of the incredible creature, which rumbled through each of its heads from someplace deep within its chest.

Harry settled in the shadow, comforted by it even though he knew he would be just as well-hidden in broad daylight, and set his eyes on the door. He didn't have to wait very long before the door opened once again, and the Cerberus rose up onto its feet, standing at its whole impressive height. All three heads growled threateningly as a cloaked and hooded figure slipped into the hall, carrying a harp under one arm.

Harry knew it was Quirrel, and he noted with some small amusement that the man did not, in fact, destroy the door as Snape had requested.

Perhaps the door itself was the trigger which would alert Dumbledore to the intrusion. Had the alarm been triggered at all?

The door closed.

What followed was perhaps one of the more bizarre experiences that Harry had witnessed since his introduction to the wizarding world.

In the face of a slowly advancing Cerberus, as the ground trembled with the thunderous timbre of the beast's growl, Quirrel began to play his harp. The song was slow and seemed to weave through the air like a tangible thing, filling the hall completely with its beauty. It was so enchanting that even Harry was lulled to distraction by its sound, and he nearly fell asleep on his feet as he listened to it.

The cerberus sat, and all three heads yawned mightily, baring ferocious teeth. Then, it set itself down and slept. Harry supposed it had been too much to hope that the beast could have killed Quirrel, saving him the trouble.

The song stopped, and Harry held his breath. Quirrel stayed completely, perfectly still, like a black statue, until he was certain that the dog was asleep. Then, he proceeded to the trap door, opened it, and slipped out of sight.

Harry ghosted across the ground and peered into the darkness. A brief flash of light told him that Quirrel was at the bottom of a short drop, standing amidst a tangle of slithering vines. Flames curled around Quirrel's body, incinerating the plant even as its tendrils attempted to trap its prey in vain, and the professor walked calmly from the midst of the deadly foliage, allowing his spell to fade. Darkness swallowed the pit once more.

Harry dropped down, onto the grievously injured creature, and it hardly even registered his weight before he was following Quirrel's footsteps, down into the winding dark.

The man was a walking wrecking ball. There were various puzzles and traps laid out to impede his progress, but they hardly gave him a moment's pause. The stone chess pieces were shattered, the flying keys summoned directly to his hand. The troll was brutalized in less than ten seconds, leaving a bloodied mess in the path of the dark figure. The entire time, Harry shadowed the professor, desperately hoping that Dumbledore would come and make his presence unnecessary.

He didn't, and Quirrel continued.

The professor and his invisible shadow came to a wall of flame with a table of potions, the work of Professor Snape no doubt, and somehow Quirrel knew exactly which vial to drink. Harry figured that Snape had told him, and cursed the greasy-haired professor silently. The defense professor stepped through the flames, leaving Harry behind.

The vial was empty. Harry didn't know how to protect himself against these flames; they could have been spelled to bypass the typical fireproofing charms. Just as he was about to turn back and alert one of the other staff members, El manifested amidst the flames and beckoned for him. Harry hesitated, drew his wand, and walked forward.

The fire bent around him as he passed through it, emerging on the other side unscathed, with a wall of heat roaring at his back.

Professor Quirrel was standing before the mirror, reaching out with his hand, and Harry knew that this, whatever it was, was the final barrier between the professor and his unknown goal.

He extended his wand, dropped his invisibility, and cast. "Ko, incedio, lacero…" a stream of various charms and hexes crossed the distance in less than a second, only to strike an unseen shield and deflect, biting into chunks of stone or curling around empty air. Quirrel spun on his heel, already retaliating, and battle was joined.

Spells jumped between them. Flames curled through the smoky, dusty chamber. Shields hummed and shrieked as they shattered, and stone cracked and rumbled. Raw power swelled between the wizards, clashing tangibly between them in a shower of cackling sparks and snapping light.

Harry landed a few curses, and took a few in turn. He was cut, bruised, and tiring quickly, but Quirrel seemed indomitable, standing stoically in the midst of a raging inferno, defending himself and the mirror at his back from Harry's destructive spell-fire.

Less than two minutes passed before Harry's shield shattered with an audible _boom,_ and a white spell struck Harry's leg. He felt the bones splinter _._ They didn't break neatly, but exploded into fragments, and the sensation of a thousand needle-like bits of shrapnel tearing through his leg from the inside drew a tortured scream from his throat as he collapsed. At once, the chamber settled into silence, save for the roaring flames. Quirrel dispelled the remaining threats and advanced, dark cloak flowing behind him like a wing.

"Harry Potter," he said, idly using magic to crush Harry's fist. The boy's blackened wand was torn from his mangled hand, and he whimpered, already insensate with pain. "I should have known it would be you. Did you really think that you could defeat me?"

Harry glared at the man but didn't speak. He saw that the professor's eyes were entirely red now, with a tall, slitted pupil at their center.

"Now that you are here, you will help me with this, the cleverest of Dumbledore's machinations," he said, expression twisting in a pale imitation of a smile. "Come now, on your feet."

He hauled Harry to his feet forcibly, setting him on his ruined leg and laughing as the boy gasped, his vision going white with pain. Harry snarled and attempted to strike Quirrel, but the wizard just caught his hand in a crushing grip and pushed him toward the mirror.

"Look into the mirror and tell me what you see," Quirrel commanded.

Harry closed his eyes. "I refuse," he gasped.

The reply was blinding, impossible agony. Harry didn't even hear the spell that had been cast. When the burning pain finally began to recede and his mind cleared once more, he was lying face-down on the cold stone, breathing in great, shuddering gasps. His leg continued to protest with throbs of white-hot agony, and Harry did not dare to glance down, fearing what he might see.

"Now, look into the mirror," Quirrel asked once again, cold as ice. Harry opened his eyes and saw El kneeling before him, compassion in his eyes.

"Why?" Harry managed to bite out between breaths. The one word contained his desperation, a plea for help from his master. El simply gestured to the mirror and was gone.

Harry stood on his good leg, shaking, and directed his eyes to the mirror. _Not because of Quirrel,_ he told himself.

The mirror was entirely featureless, but as his eyes caught on the surface, where the image of Quirrel with his wand aimed solidly at Harry's back was cut clearly before the wall of fire. Then it changed to a grown man, with pale skin, black hair, and bright green eyes, standing with a long black two-pronged spear in his hand and wearing Death's cloak. Harry recognized himself as he wished to be, the man that he would one day become.

His image reached into its pocket, and Harry felt something appear in his own robes, solid and vaguely egg-shaped. He tensed involuntarily, burdened with this precious cargo.

"What do you see?" Quirrel asked. Harry tore his eyes away and made to turn, only to feel the point of Quirrel's wand against his back. "Tell me!"

"My family," Harry lied immediately. "I saw my parents…"

The pain swallowed him again, and this time he felt his convulsing body hit the stones. It lasted longer, and by the time he could think once more, his body was shaking uncontrollably and the echo of the agony continued to resound throughout his body.

Quirrel's hand was shaking as he aimed his wand down at the raven-haired boy. His eyes, which had been twin horrors just moments ago, now contained his internal struggle. Shadows crawled and his jaw was clenched, teeth grinding together as the muscles in his arm bunched and relaxed periodically.

Harry had the odd epiphany that he was mere seconds away from his death. He tilted his chin up defiantly and awaited the curse.

Impossibly, Quirrel's wand lowered stiffly to his side, and he knelt as if he was going to search Harry's pockets. The black-haired Slytherin struck him hard across the jaw with his left hand, snapping the professor's head to the side. His hand ached, but he felt savage satisfaction at having landed the blow. Eyes blazing, Quirrel stood up, regarding his fallen opponent with blazing crimson eyes.

"You were a fool to strike me," he hissed. "Quirrel was going to let you live. _I_ am not so foolish."

Then he slashed his wand, and green light burned across Harry's chest, erasing Harry's vision.

* * *

Harry opened his eyes and thought that he was in one of his dreams. They were familiar feelings: the rush of life as his body was restored to form and the flood of sensation as systems which had been dormant suddenly awakened. He gasped, and sat up.

A clearing of trees surrounded him, dense and comforting. A campfire burned gently at his side, and Death sat beside it with a long wooden staff across his knees, eyes focused on the warm glow.

"What happened?" Harry asked.

The primordial being continued to stare at the fire. "You died. Your soul now lingers between the living world and the afterlife. With me."

The words crashed through Harry's mind like a sledgehammer, stealing his breath from his lungs. He fell back, catching himself on his elbow, but just as the shock came, it gave way to desperation.

"But…how did…"

"It was the killing curse, in case you were curious," El informed him. "Although you were dying of other injuries at the end. Your leg was well and truly ruined."

These sorts of clinical descriptions of his injuries were commonplace in training, as they discussed the things that Harry had done wrong, but this time it was _real,_ and this time the full impact of the words settled like a cold stone in Harry's gut.

"Oh," he whispered. "So I failed, then."

"Not yet," El replied, finally looking up. His face was hard but his eyes were kind. "It has only been a short time since your passing. The curse took another soul in place of your own; I can return you to your body immediately. When that happens, recover your wand, kill Quirrel, and destroy the Philosopher's Stone."

Harry fell back, too shocked to string together a sentence.

Death knelt over him, bracing his servant's shoulders with his cool, firm hands. "Look into my eyes." Harry struggled briefly and eventually focused his eyes on the pools of shadow above him. "You have the strength to do this. You will be in great pain, but you must move quickly. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," Harry whispered, although he didn't feel it.

Death nodded sharply, pulling Harry to his knees. "You have many questions to ask, and I will answer them. For now, you must trust me. Steel yourself."

Harry nodded once again, more firmly. Death placed both hands on the raven-haired boy's shoulders, and the world spun around them until Harry was lying on his back with cold, unforgiving stones beneath him.

Death gestured briskly to the side and faded away.

Harry swallowed a gasp of pain as his ailing body began to inform him of its beleaguered state once more. Casting his eyes about, he saw Quirrel standing two steps aside with a brilliant crimson stone, the shade of blood, clutched in his hand. Harry's wand laid on the ground four yards to the left.

Quirrel's face was twisted in wordless fury, and his entire body was trembling, but he remained oblivious to Harry's subtle motions.

The boy allowed the cloak to hide him and crawled as quickly as he could. Every muscle of his body protested the motion, especially his leg, but he soldiered on until the fingers of his mangled hand wrapped around that chilling length of darkened wood. The wand reacted to him like it had never done before, with a rush of refreshing energy.

Rolling onto his back, Harry saw Quirrel walking towards the fire. He raised his wand, trembling in pain.

He would have to cast his spell silently, as he ought to have done before. Quirrel was less than two steps from the fire, moving quickly, so he would have to lead his target just so...

Holding his breath, Harry made the motions for a cutting curse, gathering his magic in his chest. He gritted his teeth, extended his wand, dropped his invisibility, and allowed the magic to surge down his arm like a river suddenly freed from a dam.

The curse that spat from his wand was like nothing Harry had ever cast before. A writhing blade of white light hissed across the distance, catching Quirrel diagonally between his shoulder blades with its leftmost side. The rest of the curse bit deeply into the stone archway beside the roaring flames. Quirrel spun with the force of the spell, throwing ribbons of blood into the blaze where it hissed upon striking the stones. His body hit the ground and slid just long enough for his nearly severed shoulders to bend gruesomely from his torso, spilling blood and gore onto the ground.

Harry pitched his dinner at the sickening effect of his spell, rolling away from the puke to find the blood-red Philosopher's Stone inches from his face, where it had rolled after Quirrel collapsed. A desperate hand was outstretched towards it, grasping at nothing, and Harry followed the dark sleeve of the professor's robes to his face.

Quirinus Quirrel's eyes, dark but entirely free of the terrible crimson light, rolled in his head as the last vestiges of life fled quickly from his broken body, and Harry couldn't look away from the spectacle. He was fixated on the traces of a smile that remained on the man's pale face, and Harry held his breath until the light in Quirrel's expression dimmed to nothing. Harry felt a terrible emptiness in his chest and shuddered.

 _Destroy the Philosopher's Stone…_

Numbly, Harry aimed his wand at the stone and crushed it with a thoughtless spell. He felt that it should have been more dramatic, that there should have been a flash of light or a rush of magic to mark the destruction of a man's immortality, but it merely crumbled to dust under the force of Harry's striking hex and scattered across the stone.

Just as Harry was about to lay back in relief, a coiling mass of shadow poured from Quirrel's body, hanging suspended in the air above the ever-expanding pool of blood. Harry barely registered surprise at the sight, but he did draw away from it as a malevolent face appeared in its midst, with red eyes and a furious snarl.

"Potter," the shade spoke, and Harry knew that this was Voldemort. Revulsion turned his stomach more strongly even than Quirrel's death. "That is twice that you've survived the kiss of Death."

Somehow, Harry was not afraid of this twisted imitation of life. Hysteria was setting in, it seemed, since the only thing that he could think was this:

"You should find a new spell, Tom," Harry bit out past the pain. "That one doesn't seem to be working for you."

The shade hissed, swooping lower. "Tell me how you survived."

Harry's pain gave way to a cool numbness, and his thoughts were slowing to a halt. Still, he had enough breath to whisper, "You've made enemies more powerful than Dumbledore." The shade howled in fury and passed through the stone, leaving Harry alone with Quirrel, whose eyes stared sightlessly at the mirror.

Harry sat against the unforgiving stone wall, watching the flames dance as ice crawled through his veins. Every breath came with a prolonged struggle, one that Harry was swiftly becoming unwilling to fight. Weakly, he pulled Death's cloak tightly around his shoulders and sighed. It seemed like ages passed before Dumbledore rushed into the chamber, wand drawn, only to freeze at the sight that greeted him.

"You're late," Harry muttered, feeling his cloak fade to intangibility. The pale, distressed expression of the headmaster was the last that Harry saw before consciousness eluded him once more.


	13. Part 1 Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Harry glared at the offensive reminder of his invalidity, wrestling with the need to find a toilet and his absolute refusal to so much as acknowledge the necessity of the cane. It was truly an innocuous thing—a simple white bar with a slightly curved handle and three little feet—but it was not the object itself that discomfited him. It was the condition that begged the use of the cane that truly pained him, physically and otherwise.

He had first awakened in the hospital after the strangest succession of dreams that he had yet to experience, which was quite the statement coming from a boy who regularly spent his slumbering hours under the somewhat abrasive instruction of a primordial entity. He had felt like he was falling, but every time he slowed to a halt with a foggy vision of _something_ around him, the world would turn around him and he would be thrown once more into void and darkness, continuing in his solitary descent.

He had been relieved to open his eyes at last, at least until the healer had placed the cane beside his bed and listed, in the somewhat sympathetic manner that all doctors have mastered, the litany of injuries that he had suffered at Quirrel's mercy. They told him that it had been three days since he had been brought to the hospital by Dumbledore. Told him that he was probably healthy enough to start recovering his strength.

Harry snorted at his own pathetic state, arguing with himself about something as trivial as hauling his arse out of bed to piss. He reached out, surprised once more by spidery scars on the back of his hand, and wrapped his fingers around the grip of the cane. Swinging his legs from the bed was a simple matter; his leg was not so severely crippled. It would simply never regain its former strength, to put it in the words of the kind, bronze-haired healer.

As Harry levered himself to his feet, he felt aches blossom throughout his body, deep and insufferable. Touching a hand to his back, he hissed quietly and tested his weight. It was good that he had a hand on the cane then, because his right leg protested the strain by refusing completely to hold him up. Harry caught himself, shaking his head minutely, and walked stiffly to the adjoining bathroom.

Once he had relieved himself, he shrugged the hospital gown from his shoulders and boldly faced the mirror.

El had warned him about the scars, but expecting them and seeing them were two different things. Having a small white line on his forehead was entirely different from the obvious blemishes that marred the pale skin of his arms, chest, and legs, starting with the startling curse-scar that stretched across his ribs diagonally from his left shoulder, running over his heart to his waist on his right side. It was thin at the ends and wide at the center, with a faint orange glow that pulsed in time with Harry's heart. Its edges were raised and somewhat red.

It looked like something had pulled his chest open and left it that way. Harry half expected his innards to fall through the gash at any moment.

"The killing curse is a ruthless thing," a voice broke Harry from his inspection. He spun, teetering dangerously and fumbling with his cane. A firm hand on his shoulder steadied him. Recovering, Harry glanced at El, who stood before the closed bathroom door, and flushed.

His hand reached out to snatch the simple white gown, but El drew it away from him. "What are you doing?" Harry snapped, stepping back shakily.

"Do not be ashamed," El soothed. He gestured to the mirror. "Look."

Tentatively, Harry turned his head to the side. El glided closer, within arm's reach, and the naked boy shuddered, feeling his cheeks heat in embarrassment. The god had no interest in anything but his servant's wounds, however, touching the glowing line on Harry's chest with a single finger. As his hand traced the mark, Harry felt every muscle in his abdomen clench as if they were being pulled by a string somewhere above his sternum. A strangled gasp erupted from him, but he couldn't even pull away.

"See what it has done?" the timeless being whispered. "Though you live in spite of this lethal wound, the evidence of its brutality will remain."

When the hand withdrew, Harry's muscles gradually loosened so that he could breathe again. "Will it always be so sensitive?" he asked, hesitantly brushing its corner himself. His body trembled with small convulsions, and he snatched his fingers away.

"The curse pulled your magic to the surface of your skin," El explained. "It will remain a visible indicator of your power, and I imagine that it will be sensitive to touch."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

The god laughed lightly. "No, my child. Though the healers here may tell you otherwise, your magic cannot be harmed, no matter what might be done to that scar. Magic is a physical expression of the soul. You might find your skin resistant to certain kinds of spells, however."

The minor benefit of the obvious scar was little comfort. Harry's eyes found the others, all much less obvious than what remained of the killing curse. "Why doesn't the scar on my forehead look that way?"

"The killing curse was reflected when you were a babe, not absorbed as it was in the chamber," El replied. "I have seen wounds like these before, although they are rare. The Egyptians, especially, dealt in magic which could inflict this kind of injury."

Clusters of small starburst-shaped marks dotted Harry's right forearm and shoulder, and several thin white lines across his navel. One cutting curse scar in particular traced his left thigh, stopping just four inches shy of his testicles.

"I died," he whispered dully. Somehow, the words brought Death's cloak into reality, where it settled over his shoulders, wrapping around his body like the wings of a large bat.

El's hand tightened on his shoulder, steadying him as he wrestled with the thought. "That makes three," the god agreed. "Once, when your uncle left you to starve. Once, when the killing curse struck your chest. And again, as Dumbledore carried your body to this hospital."

"That was why I dreamed I was falling," Harry said, certain of it even as his master confirmed his suspicion.

"Unlike the killing curse, your natural death caused your soul to depart entirely from your body," the god told him. "It took time for your headmaster to convince the hospital staff to operate on your lifeless body, and even then it was some hours before your body was in good enough condition for you to return. Your soul wandered in the spaces between life and death during that time. That was what you saw."

Harry took his hospital gown from Death's hands, transfiguring it into a simple gray tunic and black trousers. Glancing at himself, Harry saw a different person in the mirror than the boy that had gone to the third floor. The bones in his face were more pronounced even than they had been before, and shadows played about his suspiciously bright green eyes.

Was it just his mind playing tricks, or did the hue of green seem much too similar to the bright, malevolent viridian of the Killing Curse?

He blinked slowly and returned to his bed, sitting with the cane between his knees. "I hate this," he whispered. "Why didn't you tell me this would be the result?"

"I did warn you that the confrontation would go poorly," El reminded him. "I do not give insight into the future lightly, for it is always changing with the present. If I had told you more, would it have changed your decision?"

Harry bit his lip, glaring at the cane and then at his leg.

"It is not a dishonorable condition," El assured him. "Let it be a reminder to you, not of your loss, but of your strength."

Harry scoffed. "I only live because you would not let me die. What strength is there in a cripple?"

"There is _great_ strength," El admonished him. "But if you allow your wounded pride to consume you, if you lay down and give up because of your troubles, _then_ you will truly be weak."

Harry winced and hugged himself about the waist. El sat gently beside him, and a table appeared before them. The god lifted the simple cane and laid it down lengthwise.

"This provides a perfect opportunity to teach you some simple runic arrays," he said quietly, drawing Harry from his dark thoughts. "We can make this cane, which you find so insulting, into a staff like you are familiar with from your dreams. It will be a weapon worthy of the greatest warlocks of old."

Harry glared at the table for a moment, idly rubbing his hand across his right thigh. He hadn't really been told what specifically was wrong with his leg, other than the fact that some bits of the bone that had been shattered couldn't be entirely vanished. He only knew that it was…humiliating to bear the constant reminder of his defeat so openly. It made him feel pathetic, no matter what his master might say to comfort him.

Eventually, he laid his hand on the white cane. "Okay," he agreed. "How do I begin?"

"Transfigure the cane into a length of black wood, as thick as your wrist and as tall as your shoulder. Very good…you'll need your wand for this, I think."

Harry found his focus, cleaned of soot, resting on the bedside table. El guided him in inscribing a series of runes onto the transfigured wood. Old written languages, long since lost to time, were etched in spirals around the ebony shaft. Sigils were carved in specific shapes, and lines were cut connecting various pieces of the arcane construction.

It was a simple staff, without the core of a wand or the magical properties of living wood. The arrays that El guided him to inscribe allowed the staff to sustain its transfiguration from Harry's magic, so long as he held it in his hand. It also contained a sizable amount of power within itself, acting as another pool of energy for Harry to draw from.

The secondary function of the many, many runes was a transformation. In the end, the staff would never be capable of channeling magic unless Harry placed his wand into it, providing the channeling capabilities of the focus and the strength of the living wood. That was the last step. First, he had to power the runes.

It took a sizable amount of power. Harry felt it rush from him as a corona of red light formed around him. The visible expression of his magic burst with a gentle pulse, and the engravings in the staff began to glow. Before his eyes, it grew longer. A bronze spike and counterweight grew from its base, and two wicked prongs curved from its head, each curving gently around a large crimson gem so that they nearly touched each other. A gap opened up between the langets of the spear as thin bands of silver curled around the wood.

"Place your wand there," El told him unnecessarily. Harry relinquished his wand and held his breath as his staff completed its transformation. There was a slight discoloration of the wood near the spearhead itself, but when Harry put his hand on the shaft he felt its power responding to him. It was like welcoming an old friend.

"You have created what many called a short staff when such things were common," El explained, taking the usual pleased tone that he had whenever he had a chance to share esoteric knowledge. "Wands became more common because they are easier to make, cheaper to buy, and it is possible to place tracers on them to track their use. The _priori incantem_ spell only works on wands."

"It feels like its drawing energy through my arm," Harry said, hefting the spear's weight. It was exactly as he had come to expect from such weapons in his dreams.

"The staff will continue to draw power until its own reserves are at capacity," El replied, smiling. "It will take several hours to charge completely. The magic reserves are the chief advantage of the staff over wands. Most magic-users find wands easier to use, but no wand will ever match the power of a staff. And for a wizard with suitable skill, any magic done with a wand can be done without, or in your case, with a staff."

Harry willed the staff to change, and it was once more an innocuous length of wood, devoid of wicked points or glowing crystals. He looked up at his master and smiled. "Thank you," he whispered, as much for the weapon as for the comfort of his company.

"Do not despair, my child. There is a blessing in all trials," El inclined his head and disappeared, taking the table with him.

Glancing at the clock showed Harry that he had been awake for almost three hours. He wondered at the fact that no one had interrupted them, and the moment the thought had formed in his head, a healer stepped into the room.

Harry almost chuckled, knowing at once that El had been responsible.

"How are you feeling?" the woman asked, waving her wand. Her eyes narrowed. "Have you been using magic?"

Harry gestured at his clothes. "Just some transfigurations," he demurred. Technically that was entirely true. The healer shook her head.

"Well, don't overdo it, dear," she cautioned him. "Your magic was somewhat volatile during your recovery. We were worried that your core had been damaged through severe exhaustion."

Harry knew that this was probably the effects of the removal of Riddle's soul shard. It had been leeching off his magic for so many years, he was sure that the sudden absence would change things. "I won't," he assured her.

"Your family is here to speak with you," the healer said. "You seem to be doing well; I was going to have them come up with lunch, if that's alright with you."

Harry found that he was hungry the moment that she mentioned food. For a moment, he puzzled over the mention of his family, since he knew for a fact that he had none who would care for his condition. Then he remembered that Dumbledore had found a wizarding family to foster him, and he gave a tentative smile. "That sounds good."

The healer departed, and Harry made a few rounds around his room, growing more accustomed to walking with the assistance of his staff. He thought that he would be able to move quickly enough, at least over short distances. Once he was in better condition, that is. He was pacing in front of the window overlooking the gardens when the door opened once again, and a tall, dark-haired woman stepped inside. Her eyes went first to the bed, then to the boy who stood beside the window, leaning just slightly on a long ebony staff.

"Hello, Harry. I am Andromeda Tonks. Are you feeling well enough for a visit?" she asked, turning as a man whom Harry assumed to be her husband entered the hospital room with a tray in his hands and a large smile on his face. Harry liked him immediately, mostly for the food that he brought with him.

"This is Ted," Andromeda introduced the sandy-haired fellow. Harry smiled, taking a step away from the window. He extended his left hand and they shook, somewhat awkwardly since Harry was used to shaking with his wand hand.

"Hello, sir."

"It's Ted to you, son," the man replied, pulling the table from the corner and setting down his tray. "I heard you got into some trouble at school, but Dumbledore didn't tell us much. He's been pretty busy between the Board of Governors, the Wizengamot, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Harry heard the unasked question and shrugged. He saw no harm in sharing the story with them, but he gauged Ted's eyes for a moment before he spoke. He found a man that knew a thing or two about hardship, someone who probably had some experience with violent injuries. Confident that he could rely on this man, if for nothing else than silent support, he began. "You know that Dumbledore had something hidden on the third floor?"

"You don't have to tell us, dear," Andromeda assured him, sending a warning glance to her husband as she brought chairs to the small table. "Sometimes Ted's curiosity gets the better of him."

"No, it's alright," Harry replied. "The item was a Philosopher's Stone."

Ignoring their expressions of shock, Harry continued.

"Professor Quirrel, the defense professor, allowed the troll into the school so that he could probe the defenses of the corridor. I overheard a conversation between him and Professor Snape some time later, and I knew that Quirrel was going to try and steal the Stone on the night I was injured. I figured that Dumbledore would return once his defenses were broken, but didn't know how long it would take him."

"So you tried to delay Quirinus Quirrel in his task?" Ted Tonks finished for him. He whistled. "I'm impressed. The man has a fearsome reputation among certain circles. He was well-suited for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position."

"Yes," Harry agreed. The man had, indeed, been very skilled. "We fought, and he defeated me, as I had expected him to. Dumbledore did not come. He tried to get me to retrieve the stone for him, but I refused. He tortured me, I think, I don't actually know the spell he used, but eventually I retrieved the stone and he cursed me. He thought I was dead, so he turned his back. I killed him."

The words "I killed him" spilled out and hung heavily in the air for a long time. Harry fought a crawling disgust that squirmed in his belly, and he saw the absolute gob smacked expressions on the faces of his new guardians. He looked away, unable to bear it. He whispered, a desperate explanation, "Quirrel was possessed, I think. A shade came out of him after he was dead and spoke to me..."

"It's alright, son," Ted interrupted him when his wife remained silent. The man sat down on the edge of Harry's bed. "You defended yourself against a superior opponent to the best of your ability. No one can fault you for it."

"I understand if you don't want to foster me anymore," Harry eventually said. Andromeda reached out to take his hand and squeezed it between both of her own.

"None of that nonsense, Harry," she exclaimed. "We might not know you very well, but we've gotten this far through paperwork and interviews, so we certainly aren't going to throw that all away at a moment's notice."

Harry bit his lip and tried to see if she was sincere or not. Seeing no hint of deception, he eventually leaned back in his seat. "Thank you," he eventually said. "I didn't expect what happened when I followed him to the Third Floor. I thought…well, I don't know what I thought. Not this."

"How are you feeling now?" Ted asked.

"Well enough, considering. The healer says my leg is…well, it won't be the same."

This put tears in Andromeda's eyes, and her grip on his hand tightened. "I'm so sorry, Harry."

"It was my decision to fight Quirrel," Harry replied after a moment of silence. He added, wearily, "I survived."

Ted, with a look in his eyes that spoke of intimate experience that sort of statement, gave him a respectful nod. "I think we'll get along just fine, Harry," he said. "How do you feel about spaghetti?"

They enjoyed a short meal together, making small talk about Andromeda's job as a barrister and Ted's career as a purveyor of magical artifacts. When Harry yawned, the Tonkses left him to get some rest, assuring him that they would stay in touch. Harry couldn't sleep for a long time, for his mind was occupied with thoughts of his injuries and the memory of the fight, but eventually a restless sleep found him.

He was not happy that it was interrupted by the entrance of Headmaster Dumbledore himself, accompanied by Andromeda Tonks. The woman looked frustrated, and kept casting dour looks at the older man's back, so Harry figured she had been bullied into letting the headmaster come to speak with him. He yawned and focused his attention on the man as he stood at the foot of Harry's bed.

He glanced at Dumbledore's eye, glad once more for the comfort of Death's cloak. He mustered a small, empty smile for the headmaster and wondered how the cloak had survived the battle without damage.

"Why did it take you so long to react to the breach of your defenses?" Harry took the opening shot before Dumbledore could speak. The man's jaw clicked shut and he frowned deeply.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied. Harry knew that it was a lie, because the alternative was insufferable foolhardiness, and even he had enough faith in the headmaster, a veteran of at least two wars, to know better.

"I know you set up the Philosopher's Stone as a trap for the servants of the Dark Lord. Something must have alerted you that things had gone awry, or else you would not have returned a day early from the ICW. Why did it take you so long?" Harry explained himself and repeated his question.

"My boy, the stone was being protected in Hogwarts as a personal favor to Nicholas Flamel. He feared that…"

"Don't lie to me, sir," Harry cut him off, feeling anger heat his blood. He stopped himself from saying more for fear of what might come from his mouth, and eventually deflated, feeling drained. "Please. I fought your battle for you, I think I deserve the truth."

"If you must know, I was in the middle of negotiations when I became aware of the trouble. I came as soon as I could," Dumbledore replied, voice suddenly hard. Ah, there was the old warrior that Harry was looking for. "What could have possessed you to confront Quirrel in those chambers?"

"I knew that you would come," Harry explained. "I thought to distract him. I wasn't about to allow him to retrieve the Stone for Voldemort."

The expression on Andromeda's face was a comical tennis game between outraged and utterly confounded. Her jaw was working soundlessly as her eyes bounced back and forth between the student and his headmaster.

Dumbledore sagged visibly. "What am I going to do with you, my boy? I hoped to spare you from these troubles until you were older."

Harry had nothing to say, so he merely raised his eyebrow in silent question.

Eventually, Dumbledore seemed to come to a decision. "I had suspicions that Voldemort had somehow survived in 1981. I thought that he might be a shade or a spirit, so I contacted Nicholas Flamel and devised a trap. What better bait could there be than the elixir of life, which has often been rumored to restore the health of even the most ruined of creatures?" Dumbledore began. Harry almost began accusing him of idiocy before he continued, but held his tongue. "I knew the true properties of the stone—I studied with Flamel for many years—and it would never have done what Voldemort desired. I also knew that the mirror I placed in the chamber would never allow the stone to fall into the hands of anyone who would use it for selfish gain. I was intending to trap the Voldemort's shade with the wards surrounding Hogwarts and determine a method of destroying it permanently."

Harry could only blink as his understanding of the situation shattered.

So it hadn't been a bad plan at all. In fact, if Harry hadn't been in the chamber, Quirrel wouldn't have been capable of withdrawing the stone from the mirror in the first place. "So you're saying that it was all for nothing," he deadpanned, gesturing to himself in reference to his injuries. "There was no way for Voldemort to use the Stone even if he got it, and no way for him to retrieve it from the mirror."

"That is correct," Dumbledore affirmed, eyes flashing. Harry fell back, shaking his head. The headmaster continued relentlessly. "Furthermore, I could not find the stone anywhere in the chamber. I can only assume that Voldemort now possesses it, for all the good it shall do him."

"I destroyed it," Harry spat, suddenly furious. He was darkly pleased by the stricken expression on Dumbledore's face. "What were you thinking when you put your traps inside a _school,_ no matter the wards? I know for a fact that at least four seventh years got through the door to the Cerberus, and that says nothing for the fact that you had a Dark Lord teaching one of your classes for weeks!"

At this, Dumbledore conjured a chair and fell into it, staring incredulously at Harry. "Destroyed?" he murmured, unable to process past the unbelievable statement. "That's impossible. Nicholas told me that nothing could destroy it."

"It crumbled to dust," Harry hammered thoughtlessly. "And scattered across the bloodstained stone!"

"Do you know what you have done?" Dumbledore exclaimed, leaning forward with his hands on the bed-frame. For a moment he looked every bit the great wizard that people claimed him to be, as the air around him shimmered visibly and his body glowed white.

Harry laughed hysterically, unfazed by Dumbledore's power. "I was cut, pierced, maimed, and tortured in the futile defense of a useless pebble!" he crowed deliriously. "Because of _your_ decision to devise a trap for the Dark Lord in a school full of children!"

Andromeda seemed to recover her voice. "Is it true?" she whispered, staring at the man as if she had never seen him before in her life. The lines in Dumbledore's face deepened as he stood, vanishing the chair and shaking his head.

"Yes. I must speak with Nicholas Flamel, to inform him of this…tragedy," he almost whispered, shaking his head. "I would advise you not to speak of Voldemort to the DMLE. Not all of his supporters were discovered at the end of the last war."

He disappeared with a small _crack._

The moment he was gone, Harry's laugh degenerated into sobs, and Andromeda gathered him into her arms, sitting with him as he wept.

A/N:

That's the end of The Philosopher's Stone. My opinions of this section are mixed. I am happy with the Harry Potter that I've established, and his master El satisfies the idea I had in my head. I felt good about the subtle changes to the atmosphere of Rowling's world with the addition of darker fantasy elements, and most importantly the instantiation of Voldemort in this section was good enough for what I have planned.

Some things that I noticed while editing this section are a) there wasn't as much of a build in suspense as Rowling's work, since I spent less time building up the Third Floor Corridor b) I excluded some of the more memorable characters such as Neville Longbottom and Ronald Weasley in favor of a more reclusive protagonist and c) I had a few rather abrupt time-skips.

Instead of spending a lot of time and effort working on this section, however, I am going to continue with hopefully greater things. The groundwork has been laid. Do you agree with my thoughts on this section?


	14. Interlude 1: Nicholas Flamel

Chapter 13

Time seemed to pass in agonizing slowness at St. Mungo's hospital, especially considering Harry's largely improved condition. Without much to do other than eat, sleep, and walk through the gardens, Harry had far too much time to think and far too many dark thoughts to occupy him. He was stewing in silence, beneath the boughs of a gnarled tree at the edge of the hospital's property, watching as the sky darkened with the gently falling sun, when he spoke in a hushed voice, knowing that he would be heard.

"Why did you tell me to destroy the Philosopher's Stone?" Harry asked the question that had been weighing on his mind ever since Dumbledore had come to speak with him. "If it was never going to revive Tom Riddle, why should I have rendered Nicholas Flamel mortal?"

Beside him, El appeared through the subtle motions of the shadows, with his eyes also directed towards the sky. Harry wondered if the god felt anything approaching wonder for the sight, even though it was his own hands that had created it.

"Nicholas Flamel, like all of mankind, was immortal already, he just failed to see it," El murmured. They were laying side by side in this limbo, a place of whiteness, and the only thing worth looking at was El himself, who returned Harry's inquisitive stare with his own wise, golden eyes. "The soul lives on past the fleeting days of the body. Let me tell you a story," he eventually said, and Harry cocked his head to the side.

"What kind of story?"

"I could tell you about the life of Nicholas Flamel, and explain to you why the Stone was as much of an abomination as Tom Riddle's horcruxes," El began, but he paused, "but instead I will tell you the story of Ithrizza, so that you will know more about your true enemies in this world. For your struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against princes of otherworldly places, against principalities of darkness, against the insidious, creeping things that prey on the thoughts of men."

Harry shivered, and waited for El to begin.

* * *

Asesh was a being of purest power; he was a warrior and a defender of peace. He existed in places beyond the mortal plane as a wondrous creature, suffused with goodwill and indomitable in his strength. He served for many thousands of mortal years, although he does not exist merely in one time or place, but in many. By his actions, entire worlds were set on their proper course, guided safely through times of strife and terror, and it was through his power that Earth skated through the Cold War without losses so terrible as to make the wars of the early twentieth century seem trivial.

But every light casts its shadow, and for every good there is evil. The universe exists in an imperfect balance, placed precariously between paradise and hell. Darker powers than Asesh existed then, and yet remain.

Asesh encountered one of these deceivers in the mortal plane. Some might have called the entity a demon. Warriors like Asesh often visit the realms that they protect, invisible to the eyes of mortals, but not to the ever-watchful glares of their enemies. Confident in his power, Asesh was not afraid of this pale, corrupted shadow that came to him there, the spaces above Earth.

He should have been terrified. But how could he have known that he was looking at himself?

For this was Ithrizza, the fallen Asesh, and he was a being of purest power. He was a liar and a thief. He existed in the dark world beyond the mortal plane as a broken, twisted thing, corrupted by hatred and insatiable in his despairing lust. He had preyed upon men for thousands of mortal years, although he does not exist in any one time or place, but rather in many. It was by his malice that the greatest heroes of men grew to become the greatest villains. His whispers drove hundreds to madness, and his temptations condemn whole nations to chaos.

It might seem strange that one could exist in the same time and space as another, and indeed such an encounter is rare, but it was ultimately the end of Asesh, the warrior angel, for he knew not who it was that he faced then, as he ghosted through the mortal realm.

"Depart from me, foul shadow," Asesh commanded. Ithrizza slithered closer still.

"You should not send me away so quickly," he hissed. "Old friends _do_ take the time to hear each other, at the very least."

Asesh found something familiar in this demon, something that he couldn't quite place, so he steeled himself and suffered the creature's presence. "Speak, then, and be gone."

Ithrizza smiled, standing close now to his knightly aspect. When he chose to take a physical form, he was a grotesque, skeletal creature. They peered at one another, glory into despair, and Ithrizza flushed with fury and hate in the face of his own forgotten power, for it was something that he could never recover now that it had been lost. He despised everything about Asesh, even those parts of the warrior that closely resembled the demon.

Fueled by this, he reached out and seized Asresh as only one ethereal creature can seize another. Ithrizza may have been a pale shadow of his former self, but he had power enough for _this,_ and Asesh, unaware of the nature of his opponent, did not seek to escape this demon that dared to face him directly. Instead, he gathered his power and aimed to eradicate the dark, corrupted thing from existence entirely, from every time that it might have corrupted, and from every space where it lurked unseen.

Power swelled between them, gathering in dark eddies and lengths of cackling lightning. Less than an arm's length apart they struggled, utter black against brightest light. Such a conflict had not been see for a thousand years, and will not be seen again until the end of days, when the hosts of heaven descend to Earth in chariots of fire.

Ithrizza may have been a deceiver rather than a warrior, and a thief rather than a defender of peace, but it was easy enough for him to remember the old skills that he had once used to protect the weak. Now he bent his will towards ever more malicious things. The overwhelming energy that gathered before him, between the palms of Asesh's hands, released itself in a tight beam, harmless to the mortal world that surrounded them, but lethal to beings of time and spirit. Ithrizza took it into his hands, feeling the overwhelming power of the angel as it burned furiously at the essence of his ruined spirit before it began to change. Purest power became a corrupted storm. A terrible, raging cyclone rose around the intertwined spirits, and it tore at them both like the claws of a horrible beast. The world around them was shattered by it, and the earth shook violently beneath them.

Pain only encouraged the demon, and the devastation thrilled him. He laughed, and the sky trembled, but it was Asesh who was most affected by this, for he was caught tightly in Ithrizza's embrace, forsaken by his strength. In that moment, as his doom approached, Asesh recognized who it was that would end him, and that ruined him more surely than any assault that the demon might have conjured. A scream so terrible that it shook the skies and cracked the earth tore from his ethereal throat as he was broken piece by piece and devoured.

The utter erasure of Asesh was the delight of Ithrizza, and the moment the warrior died the storm was unleashed. The death of an angel is a…cataclysmic event; it exceeds the limitations of time and tears through the cosmos like a tsunami wave. For a single moment, all of creation stood still, as if it were paying its respects to the beauty that had just been lost forever. Then the remnants of his being were consumed by the corruption, and with a final, euphoric exclamation which would continue to haunt the cosmos for years to come, Ithrizza departed from the mortal realm to bask in his newfound power. Time stuttered and began to pass once more.

The storm that he left behind would ravish the eastern coast of North America for weeks, and the earthquake devastated the island country of Haiti. Hundreds would die, but the world would continue to turn, and no one would remember Asesh the warrior, not even the ones that he had saved.

Lesser demons, as Ithrizza had been before he had consumed Asesh, are mostly restricted in their ability to affect the mortal realm. They generally exist in the hopeless places of the world, feeding on hunger, despair, and death; they flit through the vulnerable thoughts of mankind, exacerbating already depraved inclinations. Nothing is sweeter to them than the deterioration of a good man into the depths of depression or the clutches of obsession. They exist to dominate mankind by condemning as many souls as they can to a life of agony.

But no matter their wicked desires, they cannot so much as whisper into the ears of a mortal so long as there are not shadows already in the minds of men for them to twist into nightmares.

The more powerful demons, as Ithrizza became by consuming his righteous counterpart, have no such limitations.

Now, Nicholas Flamel was a wizard, but his father Samuel was not, and the passage of time had a truly ruinous effect on the aging man. Ithrizza seized him as his mind began to weaken, hastening the deterioration of his faculties. At the age of sixty, Samuel was haunted by hallucinations of the darkest sort, and his memory slowly slipped from his grasp. Torturing this man was a pleasure to the demon, but it was not Samuel that Ithrizza hoped to destroy, for that man had been strong enough in his youth to protect his soul from the clutches of demons. It was Nicholas.

Nicholas Flamel was a grown man at this time, but his mother had passed due to sickness when he was young. Because he loved his father, he took on the difficult task of caring for him. They had each other, and no one else; there was a bond between them that he had determined would withstand even this most dire time.

Ithrizza knew that losing Samuel would destroy Nicholas, but even with his power he could not simply kill the ailing man. Besides, it was that much sweeter to take him piece by piece over the course of weeks, rather than all at once. Samuel's mind became a prison, and despite Nicholas's natural talent for magic, he could do nothing but watch, day after day, as his father forgot his own name, and then the name of his son.

He would listen to the screams of a man trapped in nightmares and cry silently in the night. Every day, he awakened and tried to find a hint of Samuel in the wild eyes of the thing that wore his body, and every day there was less and less for him to find.

Ithrizza had taken Samuel just as surely as if he had reached out to still his heart, but this was so much…darker. Truly, it is the slow, gentle descent into death that demons most cherish; it is their darkest pleasure and their sharpest weapon.

It was then that Ithrizza seized the despairing thoughts in the wizard's mind. What might have been nothing but a passing thought became a recurring mantra. Whenever there was a moment of silence, Nicholas' thoughts turned to ever more loathsome places. His sympathy and love became a smoldering resentment. Every time he saw his father, he began to see only himself, and fear crippled him.

The demon wore him down, but still the wizard struggled, searching endlessly for ways to bring his father back to his proper state of mind. To Ithrizza, the most delightful thing about Nicholas was his most uncommon reaction to despair. Rather than giving in to melancholy, he became obsessed. Every waking hour was spent searching the most obscure libraries of magic or wandering questionable places in the world, always reaching for the impossible. This obsession allowed the demon to turn Nicholas towards dark knowledge, all better left forgotten.

He put his father on dreamless sleep potions, despite the warnings that such concoctions were highly addictive, and for a time they helped stem the hallucinations. But Ithrizza was determined and strong. Soon enough they stopped working, but now Samuel depended upon them to sleep at all, restless or not.

Nicholas turned to other remedies, then. He created enchanted bracelets and alchemical concoctions, some meant to suppress hallucinations and other meant to restore Samuel's mind. For years he searched in vain, falling further and further into hopelessness, no matter what advancements he made in the field of medicinal alchemy.

In secret, he worked with forbidden blood rituals and magic of the soul, failing in every attempt to create something that might save his father, and accomplishing only the condemnation of his own health in the process.

It was during this time, the lowest point of his life, that he committed his father to an institution, giving him more time to search for a remedy. In that time, homes for the elderly or the infirm were expensive and deserted places, but Nicholas was convinced that this was the best decision for the both of them. Time passed, and he began to visit less often, unless it was to test his newest discovery. He was afraid of what he might find the next time he went to see his father, and made constant excuses to avoid it.

Samuel's condition was deteriorating rather than improving. His mind had been lost long ago, but now his body was beginning to buckle under the strain of the treatments that Nicholas had devised. Every day he grew thinner and weaker, and every day his appetite waned.

Nicholas also suffered from his obsession, perhaps as much as his father. He rarely ate, hardly slept, and often tested his potions on himself. His skin was pale and dry like parchment, his eyes were dark, and he had begun to mutter to himself under his breath while he worked. His friends tried at first to help him, but soon they were so disturbed by his unnatural devotion to an impossible task that they either deserted him or took to arguing with him until Nicholas cut ties himself.

And one day, at long last, it seemed that something worked. Nicholas had arrived at the nursing home late at night, but it was no trouble for a wizard to slip inside. He sat beside his father's slumbering form, holding a vial of a bright, gently bubbling fluid in his trembling hand. Reaching out, he brushed the older man's shoulder, and watched as he awakened.

"Da?" Nicholas whispered, expecting a blank stare. Samuel turned wearily to see the vial in his son's hand, then stared up at Nicholas' face.

"Nicky," he whispered. At this, the alchemist's breath caught, and he hardly reacted as Samuel raised his hand to touch his son's face. "Where have you been, my son? I missed you."

Tears welled up in Nicholas' eyes, and he reached up to grasp his father's cold hand tightly, holding it against his face. "I missed you too," he dared to speak.

 _Another dream,_ a traitorous thing whispered in the back of his mind. _You'll wake up soon enough._

But if it was a dream…then Nicholas would enjoy every moment of it. "You're awake," he whispered in awe. Samuel glanced once more at the vial in his son's hand.

"I knew I was unwell, but I…" he trailed off and closed his eyes, seeming to sag against the bed-frame. "How long has it been?"

Nicholas refused to answer, shaking his head. "Don't worry about that…"

"My son, please," Samuel asked, opening his eyes. His intent gaze was all the convincing Nicholas required.

"Nine years."

Samuel's eyes became wet with unshed tears. "All this time, you've been trying to help me, haven't you? I heard you talking to me, you know. At least at the beginning…"

"I've tried so hard, da," Nicholas cried quietly, leaning forward. "I think I've got it this time. The cure."

The vial in his hand was the only light in the room. The alchemist lifted it up, but Samuel put his hand over his son's and gave him a smile. "I love you," he murmured. "So much. But…it's time to let me go."

"Don't say that," Nicholas choked out. "You're better now. Something must have worked. I can keep looking…"

Samuel shook his head and tried to sit up, only to fall back. "I don't want you to live your life like this, Nicky," he said, and a hint of the strong man that he had been shined through his weary exterior as he spoke. "I never wanted this for you."

"I don't want to be alone," the alchemist replied, feeling like a young boy once more, and Samuel touched his son's face tenderly, with a smile on his dry lips.

"Our loved ones never really leave us," he said softly. "They dwell in the happy memories, in the good things. I don't want…I don't want your only memories of me to be of my madness."

"What are you saying?" Nicholas asked as a single tear slid down his cheek.

"I don't want your potions anymore," at this, Samuel's hand dropped to the bed. "If you want to help me, go and _live_. Remember me as I was, not as I am. Never forget that I love you, Nicky. Even when…even when my own mind doesn't seem to know it."

Nicholas was shaking his head, reaching out to argue, when a change came over his father. It was the barest tremble in his limbs, the slightest tensing of his body, and then a curtain fell over his eyes and Nicholas knew that he was gone.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Pocketing his potion, Nicholas spoke past the lump in his throat. "Nobody," he replied. He disappeared with a crack, collapsing into his unmade bed back in his apartment, where he cried until his tears dried out, and only then did he allow sleep to soothe his aching soul.

* * *

Nicholas Flamel stared down at the letter that had arrived in the mail, at the emblem of a tall, proud tree surrounded with light green vines, and he knew exactly what was contained within it. A hollow in his chest throbbed as he read the flowing script identifying the sender as the _Oaktree Nursery Home._ His hand rested on the silver letter opener perched upon his desk, but he didn't make any move to open it.

His father was dead.

In some ways, it was like a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He breathed deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth, around the odd emptiness that seemed to swallow his sorrow and regret, leaving nothing but bitter resignation in its wake. The longer he sat, processing the reason for the letter, the more he felt the nearly palpable weight of loneliness closing in upon him.

The last of the Flamel line. For some weeks, it had been creeping nearer, the realization that he was truly alone, but now that Samuel was actually gone, rather than clinging to a caricature of life, it hammered home with breathtaking force.

Nicholas dropped the letter on the desk and swept out of his apartment, grabbing his coat as he went.

The night passed in a blur of loud music and bitter drink, but eventually Flamel found himself sitting in a magical establishment, pushing food around on his plate and trying to quiet his traitorous mind with alcohol. He must have looked quite pitiful, hunched as he was in his chair, with three mugs set beside a plate piled high with mashed potatoes and sausages.

For reasons unknown, a woman approached him. It might have been the alcohol, but this woman appeared to him like an angel as she sat down at his table with a smile. She had smooth skin and dark hair, bright eyes and painted lips, but it was the red dress that hugged her body as if it had been applied with spray-paint that made her stand out among the conservative clientele of the old magical pub.

He must have stumbled over a greeting, because her laughter drew his attention back to her crimson lips. "My name is Perenelle," she said. "It's a pleasure, Mr. Flamel. I have heard of your work with medicinal drafts."

Nicholas was surprised, but that was something that he didn't want to think about at the moment. "I try not to bring my work to dinner," he told her, managing with only a slight slurring of his speech. "Let me buy you a drink."

"I think water should suffice for both of us," Perenelle replied, and Nicholas shrugged. As long as this image of perfection deigned to relieve his pathetic existence, he'd agree to drink boiling acid.

Their conversation might not have been the most sensible thing, since he remained somewhat drunk, but soon enough he was done with his food and, in his inebriated confidence, he prevailed upon the woman to join him for a dance at a neighboring establishment. One with a rather more _energetic_ reputation.

They spent the night dancing to light music, delighting at once in each other and in the energy of their atmosphere. Laughing with strangers, and speaking with their eyes as they swayed across the dance floor, guiding each other with gentle touches and bright smiles. By the time early morning came, both were loath to part, and they returned to Nicholas' mostly deserted flat, where they danced in a different way.

It was desperate and beautiful, a suffusion of life and passion so powerful that it was almost violent. Magic swelled between them as Perenelle's breasts pressed against his chest, and Nicholas found that he could hardly breathe in the midst of it. This didn't drain his enthusiasm, however. In fact, it seemed to spur him to greater heights, and his arms shook with the effort of keeping his body above his lover's.

The night culminated in a release so powerful that lights burst behind Nicholas's eyes, and then they rested in satiated silence, breath mingling in the air between their slightly parted lips. Perenelle's flushed features peered at him from the curtain of her wild black hair, eyes dancing in the moonlight, and Nicholas leaned down to kiss her, gently this time.

"Thank you," he whispered, desperate for something that he couldn't even identify. The woman sighed and arched her hips against him, finding him ready once again.

They rolled until she could rise up above him, majestic and breathtaking in the dim light. She arched her back and took his breath away again, and again, and again until the sun was peeking bashfully through the window. Then, tangled together, they slept.

* * *

Perenelle became a constant figure in his life from that night onward. They studied together, since she happened to be a rather avid student of alchemy herself, and more often than not they spent their nights together as well. As weeks turned to months turned to years, they married and grew wealthy from their discoveries in medicine. The world was advancing quickly around them as the industrial revolution took the greatest nations of the world by their balls and dragged them kicking and screaming into a modern age. An age of great wonder and great terror. Wars and rumors of wars remained a constant, but no matter the troubles of the wider world, Nicholas knew that he would always have Perenelle.

He never shared with her his darkest secrets. The things that he had learned in his fruitless search for a cure for his father's madness would turn the stomach of even the most pagan witch. Although Perenelle was by no means an innocent woman—she had been raised in the Old Ways—even she would have thought less of him because of the knowledge that burned in the back of his mind as a constant, terrible temptation.

They were growing older, and doubts placed by the demon had never left Nicholas entirely. Once evil has its claws in your life, it never truly departs from you. Whispers that had been silent began to speak again, and memories of his father's final years haunted Nicholas as he tried to sleep.

Eventually he shared his concerns with Perenelle, and she assured him that if anyone could find a way to prevent madness from taking them in their old age, it was Nicholas. The woman had few inhibitions about certain disreputable practices of magic than her husband, and continued to bring him books on subjects ranging from such innocuous topics as runic enchantment to the necromantic arts.

He never had the heart to tell her that he knew of those things already, and much more besides them.

The obsession that had once driven Nicholas Flamel returned like the forbidden attentions of a forgotten lover. He fell back into Ithrizza's embrace effortlessly, almost overnight, and he soon lost sight of just what he was looking for in these old tomes of knowledge that would have been better off buried. The year was 1849, and he was fifty-one years old. There was a ticking clock above his head, so morbid and overbearing that he could almost hear it.

It was in one of his old books that he discovered a method by which he could recover his youth. Ithrizza guided him through the subtlest of things, a whisper hear, a passing thought there. Eventually, Nicholas investigated the old Egyptian art of life-drain. This practice used the life of others to extend the youth of the practitioner. In every sense, it was thievery and murder.

This was the first time that Nicholas had seen anything even remotely capable of staving off the advancement of time, but alas! that it should be such a vile thing.

He hid his discovery, not daring to mention it even to his wife. He didn't dare open that book ever again, because he knew himself well enough to see the temptation that was hidden just beneath the disgust.

His search continued, but now it felt empty, like a song that continued to play long past its end.

He grew older. And older. Even his beautiful wife began to show signs of her age. Nicholas knew that they were running out of time, and with every day that passed he spent less time searching libraries and more time thinking about the book that he had hidden away beneath his bed.

One day, he opened the book that he had sworn never to open, and learned the spell that he had sworn never to learn.

He killed his first victim three weeks after that. It was so easy that it was almost scary.

He dressed himself in a brown trench coat, wore his wide-brimmed hat, and told his wife that he was going to see a colleague. Something in his countenance must have betrayed his grim intentions, because she didn't inquire about who it was that he meant to see so late at night. He departed from their street house with the weight of her eyes on his back. Then, he walked the streets of London until he found a man sitting in an alley beside the road.

It wasn't an uncommon sight. Injured veterans of the Crimean War often found themselves in London, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Begging in the streets, they became like this bearded fellow. Nicholas approached him and dropped a coin in his hat.

"God bless you, sir," the man said, looking up with empty white eyes that had been ruined by shrapnel of some kind. Nicholas knew that if the man had seen his face, he would have known the danger he was in, but as things stood, the alchemist glanced down the alley, finding himself alone. The wrinkles deepened beside his eyes as he drew his wand.

The spell reached out with red light and took the man's heart in a crushing grip. The old soldier's mouth opened in a silent scream, revealing worn, darkened teeth, and Nicholas gasped as he felt cool, refreshing life surge into his chest. The transaction lasted only seconds. Then, the malevolent light was gone, and the man was dead. He looked as if he had starved, so thin and pale he was. Gone was all resemblance to the proud warrior that he had most assuredly been in his prime.

Nicholas stared down at the dead man, shaking with the warm rush that pulsed in his veins. He wrestled the sickened revulsion that squirmed in his belly into submission. His wand slipped back into his pocket, and he walked away. The coin that he had dropped remained in the otherwise empty hat; it was meager payment for a life.

When he looked at himself in the smudged mirror of a dirty bathroom, Nicholas saw that years had melted from his face. He looked like he was fifty rather than sixty-two. But imagining the number of people he would have to kill to regain his youth made him sick, and he puked violently into the sink.

There had to be another way.

Some ritual magic involves communication with otherworldly beings. Spirits, ghosts, and demons are only a small portion of the creatures that exist beyond mortal comprehension, but in Nicholas' pursuit of immortality, he found a way to contact something which he believed might be capable of providing him with eternal youth.

He told Perenelle his plan to summon one of these beings, and as a follower of the Old Ways, she encouraged him to do so. Her people had no qualms about negotiating with spirits. Ever since he had lost some of his age there had been a rift between them, the burning secret that strained every conversation, but Nicholas didn't dare confess his crime to her, no matter how painful it was to keep his tongue. So he prepared for a ritual that was meant to summon a djinn, hoping to repay her with success. The spell was Persian in nature, and it involved some obscure ingredients, but with his wealth and notoriety, Flamel had no issues procuring them.

He didn't know that the being he was about to summon had been with him for his entire life already. Ithrizza.

Perenelle observed the ritual, just in case whatever he summoned was too dangerous for him; but she didn't know that it would only result in her own demise as surely as her husband's. The ritual began with five drawn circles on the floor, one in the center and four others delineating equal areas out of it. Nicholas lit candles at the middle of each circle, and applied his own blood to the ground around the largest candle in the center of the arcane symbol.

He burned incense and began to chant. Only halfway through the incantation, the candles blew out as a sudden icy chill filled the room. The shadows breathed, and Ithrizza was before him.

"You can stop," he hissed to Nicholas, amused. The alchemist stumbled over the last word and stared into the darkness.

"Who are you?" he asked, suddenly afraid. Even an ignorant mortal could tell that the thing that had crawled from his summon circle was not a djinn, but something far more dangerous. Ithrizza chuckled, and the air reverberated with the sound.

"You summoned me," he replied smoothly. "You should know."

"Tell me your name," Nicholas demanded. Ithrizza drifted closer to him, suddenly visible to him in his terrible form. Despite the nearly suffocating darkness, he was visible as a skeletal creature, with horns protruding from the crown of his skull. Somehow, the bones of his nightmarish visage managed to grin.

"You cannot demand anything from _me,"_ he rumbled, reaching up to grasp Nicholas with the bones of his hand. "My, how you have grown, _Nicky._ "

Nicholas staggered back as if he had been struck. "Do not touch me," he whispered. Perenelle was rooted to the ground where she stood, unable to speak, unable to so much as breathe. She had heard of demons before, but had never imagined to face one in the flesh. Not like this.

"Why did you call me here?" Ithrizza asked, although he knew already.

"You can grant me my desire," Nicholas replied uncertainly. "Eternal life, for myself and my wife."

"No!" Perenelle suddenly exclaimed. How could her husband not see the nature of the thing before him? The nightmare glared at her, and her jaw snapped shut audibly. No matter how she struggled, she could not speak.

Ithrizza hissed and drew himself up. "Yes," he whispered. "But why should I?"

"I summoned you, so you do as I say," Nicholas demanded. Ithrizza laughed openly, and the air became colder still. Perenelle and Nicholas could see their breath coiling in the black air.

"You are a pathetic man, Flamel, just like your father was," Ithrizza hissed. "You have no power over me."

"What do you want in return?" Nicholas dared to ask, betraying his desperation. Ithrizza swooped nearer to him, stroking his cheek in a gross imitation of Perenelle's loving touch.

"I will grant you immortality," the demon said, cupping his hands. Two blood-red stones formed there, glinting although there was no light. "If you would only place your souls in these stones."

Nicholas was entranced by the stones. "What do you get from this?"

"It's a secret, silly," Ithrizza taunted him. "What do you say, hmm? Care to make a _deal_ with the _devil_?"

His laugh echoed throughout the room. Nicholas reached out to take the stones, stilling the tremble in his hand with an act of iron will. This was it. Immortality laid at his fingertips…

"How do I place my soul into a stone?"

The moment his hand laid upon a stone, he felt a terrible, ripping pain in his chest. Staring in horror, he watched a white, fog-like glow pour from his chest and fall into the red crystal, moving with each pulse of his hammering heart. When it was entirely contained in the stone, he collapsed, boneless, to the floor. Ithrizza turned to Perenelle, who was shaking her head with tears freezing upon the skin of her cheeks.

"No," she whispered, but Ithrizza was insistent. His smile dropped at her refusal, and his cold, unforgiving bones bruised her wrist as he forced her hand upon the stone, watching as her soul was torn from her chest until it, too, was held within the stones.

Nicholas swayed where he kneeled, emitting a low moan of sudden terror.

The stones clattered to the floor. "Now, you'll linger here in this world forever, as long as your phylacteries are intact. But if you die… _when_ you die, you'll join _me,_ " Ithrizza hissed, exultant. He rose up, looming above his victims. "Enjoy your fleeting years in this world, Nicky. I'll be waiting."

And he was gone, leaving nothing in his wake save for two brightly shimmering gems.

* * *

"Why would Ithrizza do that?" Harry asked when El concluded his tale.

El shook his head slightly and breathed through his nose. "Nothing is more pleasing to a demon than the condemnation of an immortal soul. By his own actions, Nicholas resigned his soul to the same eternity of torment and malice as Ithrizza, and he took his wife with him into darkness. That was why I told you to destroy the Stone."

"But now that the stone is gone, he'll become a demon like Ithrizza and prey on the minds of others!" Harry exclaimed. "It only made things worse."

"I do not suffer the dealings between demons and men to stand," El declared, flaring gold for a brief moment. "Truly I say to you; all the demons of the dark world are less of a danger to men than a single human creature bent to the will of evil."

"But there is another stone," Harry whispered. "How can I willingly condemn a woman to an eternity of torment?"

"You do not have to," the god replied quietly. "She has condemned herself already. Regardless, I imagine that she will destroy her own phylactery when she sees her husband's life begin to forsake him. What remains for her when he is dead? She is displaced in time, set apart from the rest of humanity. They both were, and suffered for it."

It struck Harry like the ending of a Shakespearean tragedy. Two lovers dying together at the mercy of a cruel, unforgiving world. "I am sorry for them," Harry eventually whispered, glancing at the gently twinkling stars that began to appear in the twilight sky with tears in his eyes.

"I, too, wept for him when he sold his soul," came the response. "But it has been nearly one hundred fifty years now. His time has paast. Do not be guilty for doing what must be done."

Harry nodded his head. "What happened to Ithrizza? Surely you could have stopped him."

"My war against the darker forces of the universe is already won," El replied. "What remains is only remnants of a greater evil, scattered fragments of a whole. They will continue to exist merely to test the devotion of my people; they introduce a measure of free will to the cosmos. What would freedom be, if there was only one reasonable life to live?"

"So these demons, shades, and spirits allow people to make their own decision through pain and despair?" Harry asked skeptically. "How does that make things different?"

"Nothing from the spirit realms can _force_ you to do anything," El corrected him. "They can only tempt you. Turn your own thoughts against you. Everything that Flamel did was within his own power, Ithrizza did not compel him. It was simple misdirection and deceit. If it had been within Flamel's heart to be as strong man, like his father had been, then he would have thrown off the chains that Ithrizza sought to bind him with. He would have followed his father's final command."

"I don't understand," Harry murmured, taking his eyes from the sky to plead silently with the timeless entity beside him. El shook his head.

"Perhaps in time, you will," was all he chose to say.


	15. Part 2 Chapter 1

Part 2 Chapter 1

Director Amelia Bones didn't know what to make of this young boy, a supposed killer. In Headmaster Dumbledore's rather cluttered office, he struck a somewhat incongruous figure, attired as he was in an obsidian-black cloak with that macabre silver clasp at his neck. The tall collar of his cloak rose to the lobes of his ears, framing his pale visage and bringing the unnatural gleam of his eyes into stark contrast with the utter lack of color which defined his wardrobe. Beneath his cloak he wore a simple Slytherin uniform, darker somewhat than the standard, with green and silver highlights that were clearly defined by neat stitches of velvet ribbon.

He held in his right hand a long, sleek ebony length of wood, polished to a gentle sheen. It was almost as tall as he was, and she could see that he was putting some weight onto the staff rather than his right leg. Where his pale hand was wrapped about the haft, the wood was carefully molded to fit his grip.

Having just entered the room, he glanced to where Dumbledore usually sat, and saw a dark-skinned wizard in his place. The broad-shouldered fellow was reclined in the high-backed headmaster's chair, watching Harry with brown, nearly black eyes. They took a single look at each other and each came to their own conclusions immediately. Harry recognized this man as a warrior, just from his hard eyes and his substantial build.

The auror was of much the same mind as his director.

"Mr. Potter," she addressed the student, drawing his attention away from her aide, Kingsley Shacklebolt. "I know you were expecting to see the headmaster, but he cannot be present here today due to a conflict of interests. I am Director Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Harry inclined his head to her slightly. His dark hair played around his features, long and unruly. "I assume this is about Quirinus Quirrel?"

Nodding, Amelia drew up a chair and gestured that he should to the same. Harry pulled second chair from its place before Dumbledore's desk with his left hand, lifting it slightly as he turned so that he would be facing both Kingsley and Amelia. If she was surprised by the fact that he could heft the furniture so easily with one hand, she didn't show it. She did notice that he sat somewhat stiffly, reaching down to massage his right leg with his hand. He laid his long staff across his knees.

"Are you still recovering?" Amelia asked.

Harry gave her a tight smile and shook his head. "This is a lasting consequence of my injuries." He indicated his leg. The woman caught a flash of something pained in his eyes, something that she usually saw in long-time veterans of the force, and it worried her to find it now in a boy of twelve years.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Before we begin in earnest, I'd like for you to make a vow. Its standard for any legal account to be prefaced by such a statement," Amelia explained. She drew a small length of parchment from a pocket in her robes and handed it to him. He accepted it with his right hand, and she noticed that he was trembling just slightly as he withdrew.

Her brow furrowed. Why was he so concerned?

His eyes perused the page quickly, and he nodded to her.

"Draw your wand in your right hand and read the entirety of the oath," she said. Harry hesitated, raised his long black staff, and before her eyes it transformed from a simple length of wood to a particularly vicious weapon. The dark shaft stayed mostly the same, although a bronze spike had extended from its base, where it rested against the floor. The head of the staff elongated into a long, double-pronged spearhead with a deep crimson jewel set in the small gap between the blades. The prongs each had a triangular cross-section, and twisted just slightly as they tapered to wicked points. Light gleamed along the edge of this transfigured steel, perfectly polished and thirsty.

Amelia saw a slight discoloration just below the blades of the spear, reaching just down to the place were a tight wrapping of silver was inlaid into the wood.

Seeing her confused and somewhat tense expression, Harry raised his left hand in a placating gesture. "I made this from my wand while I was in the hospital," he explained. "It is a short staff. Will this suffice?"

"Of course," Amelia was impressed. The cynical side of her was wondering what use he might have had for a staff, considering their rather dubious reputation among Ministry officials, but there were no laws against their creation. At least not in Britain. Some people had tried to have them outlawed, but traditionalists seemed attached to them, especially for ceremonious reasons. "Well, go on then."

While Auror Shacklebolt inspected his staff with critical eyes, Harry began to speak.

"With God and magic as my witness, I swear that the following account of the events that took place on the fourth day of January concerning the death of Quirinus Quirrel and the injuries of Harry James Potter is the full, unabridged truth. So it has been written, so mote it be." As the last word left his lips, the red gem in his improvised staff pulsed softly white. Harry didn't feel any different outwardly, but he did notice that his mind was already considering the events that were contained in the oath, and he knew that he would not be able to withhold information from them.

"Now, then," Amelia said, with a wide smile, watching as his staff melted back to a harmless walking aid. "Would you care to tell me what happened. As the only one who was present throughout the ordeal, your account of events will hold the most weight in this investigation."

Harry pursed his lips, and eventually decided that he should start at the beginning. "You are aware that a troll somehow infiltrated the school building prior to Christmas break?"

"Yes," Amelia confirmed.

Harry nodded, glad that he wouldn't have to explain that incident as well. "After defeating the troll, I became convinced that Quirrel was the one that led the troll into the school through the passageway in the dungeons."

The director of the DMLE took a second to process that. " _You_ were the one that killed the troll? Headmaster Dumbledore only informed the DMLE that the incident had occurred and that no one had been injured."

"Ah," Harry nodded in understanding. "Yes, I killed it. The troll was threatening a student, you see, and I intervened."

"Quite remarkable," Shacklebolt spoke suddenly. He peered intently at the first-year wizard. "Trolls aren't an easy adversary to face in a corridor like that. Most magic is ineffective against their thick hides."

"It proved as susceptible to blunt force as any other creature," Harry answered the unasked question succinctly.

Kingsley snorted, half in amusement and half in disbelief. Still, he gestured to Amelia. "Why did you think that your professor was responsible for the incident?" she asked.

Harry shrugged, appearing to be in thought when in reality he was fighting the compulsion of his oath, which was leading him to say that Death had informed him of the fact. Eventually, he spoke in a controlled tone. "Quirrel and I had a single conversation in detention. During that conversation, I became aware that he was struggling to control himself. He often appeared agitated, and frequently paused during his conversations to collect himself, as if he was exerting a large amount of self-control to keep something hidden from his associates. He struck me as the most likely culprit because of this suspicious behavior."

"How do you know the troll didn't simply wander into the tunnel itself?" Amelia asked quietly, wondering how a child as young as Harry, even one so widely acknowledged, could be so observant and insightful. If she was honest, it was disconcerting to watch him. It was not merely his vocabulary which implied wisdom beyond his years, but the whole of his peculiar mannerisms.

"Trolls are remarkably unintelligent," Harry answered immediately. "The dungeon entrance was unknown even to the faculty. To think that it somehow dug into that tunnel on its own…well, it seems unlikely."

"That's understandable. I was skeptical as well, when I heard Dumbledore's explanation," Amelia eventually agreed. "Do go on."

"I believed that Quirrel had engineered the debacle with the troll so that he could investigate the third floor corridor. Dumbledore had told everyone that a painful death awaited anyone who ventured there." Harry took a deep breath and released it slowly through his nose. "I began to investigate the corridor myself. For Christmas I had received a family heirloom from the headmaster: my father's invisibility cloak. I used it throughout the Christmas holidays to confirm my suspicions about the setup on the Third Floor."

"And what suspicions would those be?"

A moment of pointless deliberation led Harry to the inescapable conclusion that he would be forced now to share the entire story, even those parts that Dumbledore had warned him against. The magical oath made it impossible for him to even consider a lie of omission, let alone a blatant falsity.

"Dumbledore had baited a trap on the third floor. At the time, I knew that there was only one entrance, and that it was guarded by faculty of Hogwarts or magical suits of armor at all hours of the day save for a three-hour window from two o'clock to five o'clock in the morning. At that time, Professor Snape would place a complex locking spell on the door, which I had no hope of breaking," Harry explained. "I thought that Dumbledore, who had been active in the previous war with Voldemort," here, the boy paused and smiled just slightly, a reaction most unusual for a wizard speaking the name of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, "had created this trap for Voldemort's followers. At the time, I felt that the corridor likely contained an artefact of considerable power, one that the remaining sycophants of the late Dark Lord might desire."

"In a school?" Amelia asked incredulously. "Surely you were mistaken."

"Perhaps," Harry allowed. "It wasn't a trap for Voldemort's _followers_ , as it turned out. On the fourth day of January, I eavesdropped on a conversation between Severus Snape and Quirinus Quirrel outside the entrance to the third floor corridor. It was then that Professor Snape agreed to neglect his usual locking charm when he vacated the post at two-o'clock. Quirrel was becoming impatient, and wished to make a play for the artefact that very night."

"Why would Severus Snape help someone breach the defenses of the corridor?" Amelia asked, leaning forward. She had heard some of this from Dumbledore already, but nothing had been said about traps or Dark Lords. The headmaster had tried to fob this off as a personal favor he had been doing for Nicholas Flamel, his mentor.

"I can only imagine that Quirrel had some sort of leverage on my head of house," Harry posited simply, shrugging his shoulders. He continued in a slow, implacable voice. "He did, in fact, serve Voldemort in the last war; I am sure he has his share of secrets. Regardless, I decided to follow Quirrel when he tested the defenses. I hoped that I could somehow delay the thief so that Dumbledore would arrive in time to stop him from retrieving the artefact. At this time, I did not know that the object in question was the Philosopher's Stone."

Amelia nodded. That, at least, lined up with Dumbledore's side of the story. "Why did you decide to do this instead of informing a professor?"

"Snape was working with Quirrel, so I was suspicious of the other professors as well," Harry pointed out. "Besides that, I couldn't be sure that they would believe me when I had no evidence, and I didn't know if they were even aware of the significance of the third floor corridor. At the time, I thought that it was imperative to delay Quirrel long enough for Dumbledore to arrive in person."

Frowning, she gestured for him to continue, and Harry sighed.

"I didn't know that the Stone would have been useless to them even if they had managed to retrieve it. It was rumored to be impossible to destroy, and Dumbledore informed me that the Stone only grants its gifts to its creator. In hindsight, I believe that the third floor was more of a test to determine if there was still some danger from the Dark Lord, rather than a sincere attempt to detain one of Voldemort's loyal followers," Harry explained. "But at the time I did what I thought was best, and waited for Quirrel to make his play. He entered the corridor, dismantled each of the defenses, and reached the place where the Stone was hidden."

"What kind of defenses were placed in the corridor?" Amelia interrupted him when he hesitated. Harry blinked as if he was surprised and nodded slightly.

"Yes, yes, there was a Cerberus, a carnivorous plant, a massive stone chess set, a flying swarm of keys to a locked door, a troll same as the one that broke into the school, and a table of poisons set before a wall of flames," Harry listed each of them. "None of them delayed Quirrel at all. The Stone itself was hidden inside a magical mirror that Dumbledore later informed me only divulges its contents to someone that truly had no desire to use them. This was the true obstacle, and would have utterly frustrated Quirrel had I not confronted him."

"Why did you confront him?" Amelia asked. "Surely you knew that it was foolish to do so?"

"I was aware that I would stand little chance in a fight with him, but I had hoped to incapacitate him by surprise. I failed, and we engaged each other. After a short, brutal exchange, he struck me with the spell that ruined my leg," Harry gestured vaguely at the limb in question. "He then crushed my right hand, divesting me of my wand. He drew me up and forced me to confront the mirror in his place. Initially, I refused to do so, and he tortured me until I relented and gazed into the mirror. This was how the stone came to be in my robe pocket."

"What spell did he use to torture you?" Amelia asked delicately.

Harry shrugged. "I didn't hear it," he replied honestly. After a deep breath, he continued with his story. "Standing above me, Quirrel leveled his wand, clearly intending to end my life. I saw the same struggle in him at that moment as I saw when I had sat before him in detention at the beginning of the year. His hand shook violently, and his jaw was clenched. He dropped his wand and moved stiffly to search my pockets. I struck him with my left hand, and he told me that I had been a fool, because Quirrel had been intending to spare my life. He cast the Killing Curse then."

At this, both Amelia and Kingsley stared at him blankly. Harry swallowed, fighting his oath once again, until the director finally asked the question. "How did you survive the curse?"

"When Voldemort cast the same curse on me as a babe, he was destroyed, but a part of his soul had latched onto me instead of passing on. This soul fragment was what was taken by the curse in the corridor." He bit his tongue there, hoping that neither of them pressed him for answers.

"Setting aside the impossible act itself, how could you possibly have known that this was what happened?" Kingsley asked him.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. The words were spoken in a low monotone, but they were completely clear in spite of the way Harry rushed. "When I died, I spoke with a being that called himself Death in an out-of-body experience. He was the one that explained the nature of my miraculous survival." The final sentence seemed to drop from his mouth and shatter on the floor, breaking whatever semblance of belief either of his interrogators had held for his account.

"Mr. Potter, this is not the time for sarcasm," Amelia warned. Harry sighed.

"I can only speak the truth. That is what I saw. When I regained consciousness, Quirrel was retreating with the stone in his hand. I used a cutting charm to stop him. That was also the spell that killed him. The Stone was destroyed after he fell. As I laid in the chamber, waiting either to die or be discovered by Dumbledore, I was confronted by the shade that had possessed Quirinus Quirrel. It was this entity that he had been struggling against throughout the year."

"A shade?" Kingsley repeated. He sat up, eyes bright and intense, and Harry saw his knuckles were white as he gripped the edge of the desk. "What did it look like? Do you remember?"

"A mass of dark shadows and red light. It had a terrible face, like the silhouette of a misshapen man with dark red eyes. I knew this to be the shade of Tom Riddle, better known as the Dark Lord Voldemort, the monster who murdered my parents," the words spilled out before Harry could stop them. Amelia jumped on them immediately.

"How do you know that name?" she asked sharply. The DMLE and the Unspeakables had tried for years without success to determine the identity of the Dark Lord.

Harry narrowed his flashing eyes. In that moment, he looked nothing like a young boy, for his features were caught up in a feral grimace, and the predatory gleam in his eyes dismissed the effects of his youth. "He is an abomination and my sworn enemy. I have gone to great lengths to educate myself about his politics, his tactics, his abilities, and even his history."

"The DMLE was never able to identify him. Tell me how you know that Voldemort was Tom Riddle."

Harry seemed to hesitate, before he eventually sighed once again. "Tom Riddle was the name that Death used when he told me of the soul fragment that had been removed from my body."

"What did the shade say to you?" Kingsley asked as Amelia contemplated that frankly useless answer.

"He asked me how I survived his curse. I told him that he had made enemies far stronger than Albus Dumbledore."

"You think yourself greater than your headmaster?"

Harry scoffed. "Hardly. I was referring to Death."

After a short period of deliberation, Amelia Bones released Harry from his oath. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Potter."

"Will I be facing charges for the death of Quirinus Quirrel?" Harry asked levelly, watching the department head with solemn eyes.

The woman in question stood and shook her head. "We have already found concrete evidence that he had cast the cruciatus curse upon you twice, and the killing curse once. Your wand did not register any illegal spells. The DMLE authorizes all citizens, regardless of their age, to defend themselves against anyone that casts an Unforgivable Curse. Therefore, you will not be charged in this case. Although you were unaware of the fact that he cast an unforgivable, and you were the one that began the fight, his use of those deplorable spells eliminates any guilt that you might have had in the eyes of the law."

"I see," Harry murmured, using his staff to lever himself to his feet. "What will become of the investigation?"

"A report will be delivered to the Wizengamot containing the verifiable information from your testimony," she explained. "The facts of the case are explained, and in this case no decision will be taken, but a statement will be provided to the Daily Prophet."

Harry frowned, although he nodded his head in resigned acceptance.

"I will let you return to your studies, Mr. Potter."

Both law enforcement officers watched him amble from the room, and once he was gone, Amelia turned troubled eyes to Shacklebolt, who simply raised one black eyebrow at her and shook his head. "What do you want me to say?"

"He must have been experiencing disorientation of some kind. Hysteria," she murmured.

"Disregarding the whole bit about Death, his story exactly matches the evidence we have gathered. He _was_ tortured with the cruciatus curse. The killing curse _was_ cast with Quirrel's wand. Harry Potter _was_ deceased when he was interred in the Emergency Ward of St. Mungo's hospital," Kingsley hammered. "Finally, he was under oath when he gave us his testimony."

"So you think that he told the truth?"

Shacklebolt sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know. _He_ certainly believes it, since the oath didn't pain him. Unless he is an occlumens, that implies that he actually experienced the things that he said. Most importantly, his description of the shade matches my experience, so he wasn't hallucinating that, at the very least."

"You've seen shades before?" Amelia asked, sitting up tensely.

The dark man nodded, pensive and troubled. His eyes were distant when he spoke, moving as if following the picture of an invisible film. "I was hired to escort a team of curse-breakers to a tomb in Syria. It was a Zoroastrian catacomb of some kind; it was said to be the resting place of a powerful warlock. When we arrived at the tomb, the curse breakers led us into its depths, where we encountered the shade. It was then that we realized the true nature of the catacomb."

"What was it?" Amelia asked. "I've never heard of such a thing as shades."

"It was not a tomb, it was a temple," Kingsley eventually replied, shaking his head. "The crazed fellow thought himself a god of some description. He had been lingering in this world as a shade. He spent years teaching deranged acolytes the debased practices of his time. All of the things I saw there are better left forgotten. We determined that it would be best to destroy the shade and his disciples, of which there happened to be six. One of the men that accompanied me knew how to destroy the shade, and I…disposed of the acolytes with the assistance of the curse breakers. He did his part, and I did mine. We were the only ones that escaped those catacombs that day, and we swore never to reveal the location of the tomb to anyone. I never asked him how he had destroyed the shade. After that, I gave up freelance work."

"What was the name of the other survivor?" Amelia asked, fascinated with the story. This was about as talkative as Shacklebolt ever got, and she couldn't count on hearing the details at any other time.

Shacklebolt laughed darkly. "Quirinus Quirrel. I alone bear the memory of that terrible place now that he is dead."

At that, Amelia fell into uncomfortable silence, looking troubled. The fireplace flared green, and barely a moment passed before Albus Dumbledore stepped through the flames, already brushing soot from his shoulders and beard. He saw Shacklebolt sitting in his chair and gave the man a somewhat amused smile.

"Amelia," he greeted the director, stepping around the desk. "I take it things went well?"

The woman peered at him for a long moment. "You lied," she eventually declared, standing. He was still taller than she was, but it made her feel as though they were on more even terms to be on her feet.

At this, Dumbledore's jovial demeanor evaporated, and he turned towards her with shoulders held straight. His lips were pursed. "Is that so?"

"You said nothing about your traps or machinations when you gave your testimony," she pointed out. "You were under oath, and you lied."

"Such oaths have always been of rather questionable effectiveness, especially against those who have trained themselves in the magicks of the mind," Dumbledore retorted evenly, shaking his head slowly. "I thought that it would be better to keep potentially dangerous information to myself. If my suspicions had proven true, then there was no telling how far the Dark Lord's corruption might reach within the Ministry."

Amelia scoffed. "It is the role of my department to decide what is dangerous and what is not. Do you believe that Voldmeort still lives?"

Dumbledore hesitated just long enough that he needn't answer the question.

"Dammit, Albus!" Amelia ejaculated, surging to her feet. "Many things might have been different if you had informed the Ministry that the war never really ended that dreadful night in 1981."

"Some things, perhaps," the man allowed. "But what would you have done, really? I didn't have any proof of my suspicions, not until Voldemort revealed himself through the actions of his servant Quirrel. I think that you should consider your options most carefully. It would be extremely dangerous for us to allow this information to become public knowledge."

Amelia was suddenly stricken by the thought that Harry Potter had not told Dumbledore about the shade. That begged the very important question: had Harry lied to Dumbledore, or had he lied under oath, just as Dumbledore had?

"I don't follow your reasoning," Bones replied. "It seems to me that you've lost your mind. Preparations must be made _._ There is no knowing what Voldemort has been doing for the last decade."

"Most of Voldemort's followers believe him to be dead. If rumors begin to spread that he lives once more, how long do you think we would have to wait before the Death Eaters restart their campaign of terror? They were not defeated in the last war; they only lack someone powerful enough to bring them together," Dumbledore explained. He stepped towards her, imploring with his expressive blue eyes. "Everything that I have done, I have done for the greater good of the Wizarding World. You must believe that, even if you do not agree with my methods."

"You're proposing a cover-up, then," Amelia eventually relented, consenting at least to hear the man's proposal.

Dumbledore nodded in relief. "Yes. And it will be the truth. From a certain point of view."


	16. Part 2 Chapter 2

Part 2 Chapter 2

Hermione glanced across the Great Hall, catching her friend's terrible gaze quite by accident. A chill squirmed along her spine and she averted her eyes at once, wringing her hands in her lap and wondering how this could be the same quiet boy that she had known just a short week ago. Had he always been so…otherworldly?

Harry Potter had returned from the hospital just yesterday, and at first Hermione had been determined to track him down and demand explanations for the stories that were being printed in the Daily Prophet, but of course the moment she saw him she reconsidered. It would have been rather brash of her to brazenly confront a known killer, after all, even if he _was_ her only friend, and laying her eyes upon him had brought all of the speculations of the Prophet to the forefront of her thoughts.

He didn't look at all like the Harry Potter she remembered. Well, that wasn't strictly true, but Harry felt like a stranger to her nonetheless. He had always been thin, but his features had never been quite so _sharp._ His eyes had always been bright, but the shade of green was just that much bolder. They were hard to look at directly.

Well, perhaps his appearance really hadn't been much changed by his ordeal. His wardrobe seemed to have suffered, since he always wore the same dark cloak with a tall collar and its rather disconcerting silver clasp, but otherwise he was much the same as he had ever been.

Except _different._

It might sound as if she was making much ado about nothing, but she knew that something had changed, and Hermione wasn't the only one that noticed. His housemates gave him a wider berth at their table in the Great Hall, and no one had dared to ask him about the article in the Prophet, no matter how much they had carried on about the scandal just a few short days prior to his return.

Harry reminded Hermione of Professor Snape, honestly. Yes, that was the perfect comparison. Harry Potter was _intimidating_ in ways that he had never been before, and Hermione couldn't figure out why. Besides the obvious fact that he had _killed the Defense professor._

The article hadn't explained _how_ it had happened, but judging by Harry's subtle limp and long staff, it must have been a fight of some description. To think that a first-year student had bested their _professor…_

Every time she laid her eyes on him she was put on edge, distinctly uncomfortable even with the simplest act of meeting his gaze from across the room. Knowing that he had blood on his hands wouldn't have made her feel this way. It might have been a perfectly justified act of self-defense. What perturbed her was the fact that she _couldn't_ determine why she felt so…uneasy about him.

In fact, Harry Potter reminded her of the German Shepherd that lived on her street, just three houses down from her house. Obviously, he lacked the trademark black and brown pelt and the tall triangular ears of that distinctive breed; it wasn't his physical appearance that engendered the strange comparison. Rather, it was the way that he made her feel just by sitting at the table, dressed as he was in his dark wardrobe and holding that strange black staff in his scarred, bony hand.

Maximilian was a huge dog. He'd never hurt so much as a fly, but there was just somethingabout the powerful beast that prickled the primal part of Hermione's psyche. Something that warned her to tread carefully.

It was understandable in the dog's case. The animal was heavier than she, and even on all fours its head was smack in the middle of her torso, so she knew that there would be nothing that she could do to save herself if the adorable dog decided to attack her. One of the things that made Maximilian such a pleasant pet was his silent strength; it felt good to share comradery, no matter how primitive, with a noble beast such as the German Shepherd.

Hermione was baffled to encounter the same odd cocktail of emotions in her only friend. Whereas Maximilian could quite clearly be considered a dangerous animal, Harry Potter was a rather diminutive boy for his age. He was stick thin. There was nothing outwardly intimidating about him at all.

Why, then, did she feel that same subtle thrill when she looked at him that she felt when Maximilian was bounding towards her from the neighbor's yard? It was a slight surge of adrenaline, just the beginnings of the flight or fight response. She couldn't decide if she disliked it or not.

So she decided for the time being that she would talk to him later, and carefully set her plates aside.

Harry, for his part, noticed that his friend seemed somewhat conflicted; it was rather impossible for him to miss the furtive glances she sent him from her seat at the Gryffindor table. He thought about trying to talk to her, but he figured that she would continue avoiding him to the best of her ability, and hunting her down would only serve to make her defensive and cranky. No, it was better that she come to grips with things on her own.

So he decided that he would wait, and continued eating.

It was almost three days before Hermione finally mustered enough courage to talk to her friend at least once. It was a matter of clearing the air between them. She was far too curious to let the matter rest, and even though a small part of her would never stop whispering that she shouldn't associate with a boy that seemed as prone to the violence as Harry Potter, she figured one conversation was the least that she owed him for saving her life.

Besides, hadn't her mother always said that it was better to draw her own conclusions, rather than relying on someone else's? In this case, it seemed wise to get his side of the story, instead of relying entirely on hearsay.

She knew that Harry often walked out to the lake to practice his spells, and waited for him by the gate after lunch on Saturday. As the minutes passed she grew less and less confident in her decision, and resorted to fidgeting uncomfortably in place. She was just about to give up the whole endeavor and return to the common room when she saw his trademark cloak from the corner of her eye. She froze momentarily, unable to decide if she was happy that he had finally arrived or irritated that she hadn't been able to escape.

"Hello, Harry," she greeted him as he approached her with a small smile on his pale lips. Her internal ruminations ignited into a fierce war between discomfort and burning curiosity, one that she didn't think would die down at any time soon.

Having caught sight of her lurking by the Hogwart's gate, Harry found himself pleased that she had finally chosen to speak with him. Now that he was close enough to see her face, however, he perceived the internal struggle that was taking place, and wondered what had her so concerned. His smile faded away as his mind raced, but he nodded amiably to her as his black eyebrows twitched together, itching to form a frown.

"Hermione," he replied, neutrally.

Standing so close to him, Hermione noticed things that had escaped her notice before. Her friend held himself more confidently, and his eyes were restless in their sockets. She felt as if he had scrutinized every detail of her appearance before they flitted away to inspect a nearby shrubbery or the pattern of the flagstones, following each contour of his surroundings with lightning-quick motions before focusing once more on Hermione's nervous features.

Harry had always been somewhat thin, but now he was positively gaunt, and the change gave him a decidedly vampiric mien. The high collar of his cloak didn't help that. "You look like Dracula," she joked, rather awkwardly. His head tilted just so, and his green eyes glittered at her in the afternoon sun.

"How do you mean?"

"Well…" her words deserted her.

Harry shook his head, starting to walk once more, now with Hermione at his side. His long black staff swung jauntily at his side, and Hermione noticed the arcane markings that ran all along its length. When he tilted his head back with his eyes closed, Hermione saw the sun play across his white skin, and she wondered if he was prone to sunburns…like a vampire. "If you intend to ask me about the article in the Daily Prophet, do so quickly."

"I wasn't," Hermione assured him quickly. It was a lie, but how was he to know? Besides, she wasn't sure she was ready to broach the topic of conversation as soon as she had first expected. How do you discuss such a thing in casual conversation?

 _Oh, hey, do you remember that time when you_ killed the Defense professor _?_

 _Yeah, Hermione. I had a smashing time!_

Stupid.

"Sure," Harry drawled, narrowing his eyes. "I don't imagine you had any time for rumormongering, with exams just on the horizon."

"Precisely," Hermione agreed, gnawing her bottom lip. When she noticed she was doing so, she stopped, but Harry had already glanced at her, catching the nervous tick.

He sighed and stopped, turning on his heel so that his shoulders were square to her. Hermione had a sudden, intimate understanding of the feelings a mouse might experience when cornered by an owl. Or a snake, in Harry's case.

 _Not the time for puns._

"Ask your questions, and I will answer," Harry declared, narrowing his eyes. It was more of a demand than a statement. Hermione shook her head quickly, nearly giving herself whiplash in the process.

"No, no, I don't want to. Really."

"Go on," Harry insisted, gesturing with his left hand. "I insist that you air whatever concerns you might have at once."

Hermione searched his angular features and saw only the slightest hint of impatience. There was a brightness in his eyes that smacked suspiciously of mirth, but the rest of his face might as well have been chiseled from marble. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"You know what happened," Harry pointed out. "Or didn't you read the paper?"

"I don't think it's true," Hermione asserted. She noticed that Harry's eyes lost whatever amusement they might have held, and suddenly felt somewhat more threatened. It was incredible what her intuition could divine from such a small, almost intangible thing.

Harry eyed her for less than a second, but it seemed to stretch on for a minute. "Why?"

"It doesn't seem like something that you would do," Hermione muttered, feeling silly.

"What? You don't think I could have killed Quirrel?" he asked. Alarmingly, he sounded almost amused. She dared to look into his eyes for a moment before biting her lip and looking away, towards the Forbidden Forest.

"Not that," she whispered. She had no doubts about _that._ After all, she had seen what he had done to the troll in the corridor, and she had heard about the fights with the other Slytherins. Really, the fact that he had killed someone hadn't surprised her as much as it _should_ have, which was part of the reason she was so concerned.

She wondered if Harry knew just how aggressively expressive his eyes were. They seemed to broadcast his every emotion, and Hermione had seen cold, hard resolve in them just enough times to know that he was capable of violence, no matter his youth. She didn't need to observe it firsthand to understand that. It was even more pronounced now, strangely enough.

Her mouth was dry, and her body was tense. Hermione had never really associated with dangerous people before; it was why she was so uncomfortable with the way her heart was pounding in her chest. She almost feared that it would burst free at any moment and run away.

She never felt this way with dogs. It was a more terrible fear that gripped her now; there was no convenient leash and collar to protect her with Harry. Only the somewhat tenuous nature of their friendship assured her that she would not come to harm. Her _mind_ knew that he would never raise his wand against her.

But what her mind knew, her heart ignored.

It was his eyes, she eventually decided. Their unnatural brightness, wily cunning, and keen regard combined to form a truly unsettling effect, one that put her on edge and dispelled any faith that she might have had in his gentle nature.

"I...I don't see why you went to the third floor in the first place," she eventually explained.

"Ah," Harry replied languidly. _He_ was entirely at ease. Hermione almost resented him for remaining unaware of the way he made her feel, but then again, what exactly did she expect him to do? Wear sunglasses? "You know that I suspected Quirrel for the incident with the troll. I had been observing the third floor for some time prior to the incident, and during that time I had concluded that there were two members of the faculty conspiring to run Dumbledore's little obstacle course. Their goal and their methods were unknown to me, but I assumed correctly that Dumbledore would return the moment he was alerted that something was amiss. I went to delay the thief until Dumbledore could deal with them himself."

Hermione nodded slowly. "But why did you care about the corridor at all? Once you figured it out, you could have left."

"I told you that Professor Quirrel had allowed the troll into the school, and suspected the third floor corridor for his motive. When I determined that Dumbledore had an item of great importance stashed there, I thought that I could contribute to its defense," Harry obliged her. She looked at him once again and relaxed slightly. He was smiling, even if it didn't seem to reach the entirety of his features. There was always a shadow about her friend, one that she had grown almost fond of during the last several weeks. Now it chilled her to the bone.

"Oh," Hermione said intelligently as she mulled over what he had said. _But why?_ She felt that this was a question that he would be reluctant to answer, and tried a different tack. "How did you end up in St. Mungo's? And what happened to Quirrel?"

"Dumbledore delayed too long, and I was forced to intervene to protect the Philosopher's Stone. During the ensuing conflict, Quirrel gave me several severe injuries and forced me to retrieve the stone from its place. Assuming I was dead, he turned away and I killed him while his guard was down. After that, I succumbed to my injuries and Dumbledore took me to St. Mungo's. Does that satisfy your curiosity?" Harry regaled her with the shortened version of events, and Hermione paled considerably at even this most obscure description of the violence.

"What spell did you use?" she whispered before her shocked mind could swallow the errant words. Harry looked at her, intrigued, and his bright eyes seemed to pulse as his small smile grew.

"It was a cutting curse," here, he paused and touched her arm lightly in an imitation of concern. At least, that was how it appeared to Hermione in that moment. His every action was cast in a new light, every word in suddenly unfamiliar context. "Is that what they call morbid curiosity, Hermione? You are looking quite pale."

She didn't understand how he could be so…callous about killing a man, no matter the circumstances. Wasn't it meant to be a great burden? Heroes were meant to be averse to brutality, and wasn't Harry supposed to be a hero? The up and coming Leader of the Light?

"Do you regret it?" she asked him quickly, before she lost her nerve completely. She hid her shaking hands by clasping them behind her back and squaring her shoulders.

Harry leaned on his ebony staff and shook his head slowly. "When the entirety of Dumbledore's scheme was revealed to me in the hospital, I wept bitterly in the arms of a woman I had only just met." He confided in her, and for a moment Hermione was almost relieved. Then he continued, a lock of black hair falling over his face, "But those tears were _not_ for Quirinus Quirrel. My sorrow was for myself, for the pain that I had suffered, for the wounds that I will bear for the rest of my days, and for all the people who go about their lives in blessed ignorance of the sacrifices that have been made to keep them free from the designs of corrupted creatures like Voldemort." His voice had dropped to a low whisper, and Hermione couldn't deny the raw emotion hat hummed in every syllable of his impassioned speech. Her breath had caught and she held his eyes as he straightened himself and brushed his fingers across the fabric of his cloak. "Quirrel's death is only a single scene in the greater tragedy that is playing out around us with every passing day. For _that_ I shall weep, and for nothing less than that. Does that disappoint you?"

Hermione took a small step back, trying futilely to reconcile the article in The Daily Prophet with Harry's mention of Voldemort. "Did he deserve to die? It was common thievery," she protested weakly.

"If you choose to believe _that,_ then you will always remain just another spectator, watching the contortions of puppets without the slightest awareness of the strings which guide them," Harry told her seriously. "In other words, take care in the things that you believe, especially when those things are printed in public newspapers and censored by government officials."

"What was true and what was false?"

" _That_ is the question," Harry exclaimed, thumping the ground with his staff. His teeth flashed in a smile, but he shook his head. "I can say no more. Are you coming to practice with me or will you desert me now that your curiosity is satisfied?"

He knew that her response would determine the fate of their somewhat curious association. Did she value his friendship enough to risk being painted with the same broad brush that the Daily Prophet seemed willing to apply to him? And, for that matter, would she one day find herself unable to stomach Harry's unnatural habits and violent history?

Despite the fact that Hermione was more inclined than ever before to strap her friend to the floor and extract every detail of the matter from him by force, Hermione only sighed and let him divert her attention. "I'll practice with you," she eventually agreed against her own better judgement.

 _What would Mother say if she knew about Harry's history?_

Well…that thought only encouraged her. Hermione always took uncommon pleasure in the flabbergasted look on her mother's face whenever she did something quite unexpected.

In her mind, it came down to a matter of resilience: was she prepared to return to life without the questionable pleasure of his companionship? How long could she withstand the unsettling nature of her only friend?

A few more minutes surely…


	17. Part 2 Chapter 3

Part 2 Chapter 3

"So you're the Boy-Who-Lived?" was the first thing that she said. Harry glanced up from the book that he held just above his lap, towards the door of his compartment on the Hogwarts Express, thankfully deserted, and found the unmistakable Nymphadora Tonks there, leaning against the doorjamb and inspecting him with her too-wide blue eyes.

It really was quite considerate of her to wear pink hair; the rest of her features changed so often and so drastically that it would have been nearly impossible to identify her if she ever chose to omit that particular trademark. Currently, she wore it in long tumbling curls, and her face was as angelic as it was absurd, with exaggerated edges and large, gleaming eyes.

She appeared differently every day, and all of her skins were just as flawless as the next. It was this perfection which distinguished her from her peers; no one was naturally without blemish.

"Yes," Harry eventually replied. "And you're Nymphadora Tonks."

" _Just_ Tonks, thank you," the young woman said, pushing away from the door and stepping into his compartment. Without so much as a questioning glance, she plopped down across from him and crossed her legs daintily, laying her palms across her thighs and tossing her hair. She was wearing a white blouse with intricate lace at the shoulders and cuffs, with a red sash about her waist and a knee-length skirt. A simple silver pendant glinted in the faint sunlight from its resting place just above the gentle swell of her breasts, where the cut of her dress dipped in a V.

Harry frowned at her for a long moment, before shaking his head. "You don't have to do that," he finally said, returning his attention to his book.

"What?" Tonks asked blankly, but Harry only scoffed lightly.

"You've altered your features deliberately in an attempt to make my own appearance seem more natural. It isn't necessary. But thank you all the same." He glanced at her, as if daring her to deny his oblique accusation, but other than the subtlest of changes in the color of her hair, she showed no visible reaction.

"Oh, I wasn't," Tonks replied, curling her hair about a long index finger. "I was just feeling quite feminine today."

"More than usual, I assume?"

Tonks snorted. "Quite."

He eyed her skeptically, and she sighed, leaning back in her seat. As he watched, her jaw widened and her cheekbones fell, her cheeks gained a hint of color, and her lips grew fuller. Her eyes recovered a natural appearance, and changed from blue to brown. The rest of her gained significant mass as well. The definition of muscle showed on her arms, her blouse grew tighter across the bosom, and her legs lengthened so that her skirt was almost indecent.

Before, she had appeared as a fragile creature, more like a porcelain doll, but _here_ was the warrior that Harry had heard rumors of throughout the school. Her full features and defined muscle gave her a more dangerous impression, and there was a beauty about her that was just as striking as before, only in different ways.

Her wand, which was thin and white, danced daintily in her hands, and her skirt lengthened proportionally, covering her thighs once more. Her hands smoothed the slightly rumpled fabric, and she gave him a somewhat teasing grin.

"Better?"

It was a face that he had seen before, and one that Harry suspected she was quite comfortable with. She didn't appear to him as extraordinarily attractive, but neither was she plain; it wasn't her features so much as her energy that defined her allure.

"A singularly impressive talent," Harry praised. "I imagine it will prove quite useful in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Tonks flashed her teeth in a winning smile. "How'd you know that was what I wanted to do?"

"I think your parents mentioned it while I was in the hospital."

"Ah," she nodded her head. "Nasty business, that. I was really very sorry to hear about your leg. Was there nothing that could be done?"

"Short of amputation and regrowth, this was the best they could do. The former procedure would have taken some weeks to complete, and it doesn't always work," Harry explained, casting his thoughts back to the duel. "The curse that Quirinus applied was quick and brutal."

Tons eyed him intently. "You almost sound as if you admire it."

Harry pondered this briefly, and shrugged. "He was a skilled man, with great power and greater knowledge. It seems petty to hold a grudge against the dead."

Tonks blinked owlishly, and Harry turned the page in his book. "So the Prophet was actually telling the truth?"

"Far from it," he replied wryly. "Their version of events is an appalling mixture of lies and half-truths; it is nearly impossible to determine one from the other."

"But you _did_ kill our professor?" Tonks asked him bluntly, to which Harry responded with a short laugh.

"Yes," he said, and he couldn't quite keep the hollowness from his voice. "I killed him."

The girl didn't seem quite as bothered by this as Hermione had been, simply nodding her head and tossing an errant lock of her hair across her shoulder. "What spell did you use?"

"You're the second to ask me that question," Harry told her. "Doesn't it seem rather macabre?"

"But it's natural curiosity. Come on, don't leave me in suspense," Tonks pleaded, leaning forward in exaggerated anticipation.

Harry's lips curled in a half-smile. "You'll be disappointed to know it was a cutting curse."

" _Really?"_ Tonks whistled. "I _am_ surprised. And trust me, I know a thing or two about dueling. That's a hard curse to kill with, let me tell you. I can only think of three cases off the top of my head…"

"Why?" Harry asked earnestly. "It seems logical that a cut should be lethal. Blades are wicked enough."

"The cutting curse is not resistant to healing like most other combative curses," Tonks explained. "Any duelist with decent instruction could shrug off even a potent cutting curse without so much as a scar to show for it. Unless you manage to decapitate or otherwise disable your opponent, the cutting curse and its cousins are used more for harassment than as finishers."

Harry closed his book and set it neatly aside. "Ah. Well, the curse struck Quirrel across the shoulder-blades and bisected his shoulders and neck from his torso," he deadpanned. She stared at him, properly shocked, and Harry only looked towards the window. "In case you were curious."

"I wasn't," Tonks muttered. She didn't look outwardly disturbed, but Harry assumed that this was a result of her unique capabilities as a metamorphagus, and not a true indication of her feelings. "That's a strong curse for your age. Very impressive."

"What do you know about dueling?" Harry asked her directly, suddenly unwilling to discuss Quirrel's death. "I must admit that I am most interested in the topic."

"I've been studying under Professor Flitwick for a year now, and before that I completed two independent studies on various forms of dueling, both European and Eastern," Tonks declared, drawing her shoulders back. "Dumbledore says that I am one of the best he's seen in the last decade."

"Truly?" Harry looked at her more closely, wondering how he had missed the subtle evidence of her skill. Like the Auror Shacklebolt, he should have seen the marks of her training in the way she stood and the way she walked.

More importantly, it would have showed more distinctly in her appearance. Sure, there was a measure of athleticism to her physique, but it didn't imply danger like the rangy form of a duelist. "Do your metamorphagus abilities affect your physical strength?"

"Yes, of course," Tonks replied.

"So you could make yourself as strong or as fast as you want? I suspect that most wizards could be dueled to a standstill simply by virtue of your superior conditioning," Harry pointed out. "The effects of the body on the use of magic are quite dramatic."

Tonks was looking at him with new respect. "That's true," she agreed. "How did you figure that out?"

"As I said, I have an interest in combat. I have been studying the habits of warlocks from many different time periods throughout history, and practicing their techniques," Harry explained. He gave her a conspiratorial grin. "The library contains many books which would be better suited to the Restricted Section, but they are so old that most people don't pay them any attention."

At this, the young woman narrowed her eyes. "What sort of books?"

"Nothing so terrible," Harry backpedaled, waving his hand. "Here, I was just reading a perfect example."

He handed her _Practices and Spells of the Etruscans_ by _Ewan Sellers._ It was a combat manual written by an Englishman from the early eighteenth century, detailing much of his archeological study into the habits of the Etruscan people. Surprisingly, the Wizarding world had more information on them than the muggle scientists, mostly because the Etruscans had been a deeply magical people. Most of the ruins remain protected under the Statue of Secrecy. Most importantly, detailed descriptions of their unique arsenal of spells and techniques had survived the centuries, compounded neatly in Sellers' book.

For example, the shield breaker, which had the incantation _sussurus,_ was a most useful example of their spells. The author of the book seemed to think that the spell worked by causing violent perturbations in the air between the caster and his target, resulting in an effect similar to arcs of lightning. Shields of any sort were generally torn asunder in moments, and the spell doubled as a torture curse. Prolonged exposure _could_ be lethal, but it was highly inefficient.

Tonks paged through the book for a moment and laughed. "I'm not surprised nobody looks at these. I can hardly understand a word the man is saying."

"Well, it takes some adjustment," Harry told her, reclaiming the book.

"I just want to know how you got Madam Pince to let one of her books out of her sight."

Harry scoffed. "Really, she isn't half as much of a scow as people make her out to be," he exclaimed. "You just have to be polite."

"Such a Slytherin," Tonks teased. "Buttering up the librarian for your own nefarious purposes."

"That's me," Harry shook his head. "Do you think that you could teach me a thing or two this summer?"

"Underage magic," Tonks reminded him, and Harry simply activated the runes in his staff, delighting in the dumbstruck expression on the girl's face as she watched it become a true weapon.

"Staffs of this sort aren't traced by the Ministry. And any magic which isn't tied to a wizard is assumed to be the work of magical creatures, since the Ministry assumes all of its citizens use wands," Harry explained. "It's a neat little loophole."

"Where did you get that?"

Her eyes were fixed on the bright red gem which was ensconced in the wicked spear-head of Harry's staff. He had been filling his staff with magic unconsciously for days now, and the glow was easily as bright as a torch. "I made this while I was in the hospital. It's all transfiguration, sustained by rune arrays. I inserted my wand into the staff to make it function properly."

"That's incredible," Tonks whispered. "What kind of runes? You realize that this is easily NEWT level transfiguration?"

Harry frowned, and shook his head.

"Gems are notoriously hard to transfigure, and they are borderline illegal," Tonks informed him. "Don't attempt to sell or barter with transfigured gemstones. The Ministry could hardly care less, but Goblins will string you up by your entrails if they catch you."

Harry barked a laugh. "That's a pleasant image."

"I'm serious," Tonks insisted. "I'm a future law enforcement officer, so I know what I'm talking about."

"The gem only serves to store magic," Harry told her. "Besides, I don't see what's so complicated about it. I learned all the necessary skills in books, and it's not like I had to know the theory behind the runes to copy them down."

"You're insane. How did you know that the rune arrays would interact properly together? You could have caused an explosion!" Tonks admonished him. She held out her hand tentatively. "May I?"

Reluctantly, he allowed her to hold the staff. She licked her lips and gazed upon it with naked admiration, turning it over in her hands and inspecting the markings that were etched onto the haft. Her finger ran across the twisting silver inlay, and she brushed against the edge of the spear-head, only to yank her hand back with a small cry.

"Sharp!" she exclaimed, inspecting the drop of blood that welled up on the back of her hand.

Eventually, she gave it back to him, and Harry let it return to its disguised state. "So what do you say? I'm sure we could teach each other a thing or two."

If she was offended at the offer of teaching from a twelve-year-old, it didn't show. Instead, her eyes focused on the glowing crimson gem as she spoke. "If you make me one of those, I'll teach you everything I know and throw in a kiss for good measure."

"It's a deal."

Tonks grinned, and it gave her an almost predatory look. After a moment, her expression froze and became contemplative. "It has to be pink, though. Or white!"

Shaking his head, Harry returned to his book with a lighter heart and high expectations for his summer.

* * *

Harry gazed across the rolling hills of Northumberland from his bedroom window, listening to the distant cadence of the waves. The stars faded gently into view as the sun relinquished his dominion over the sky to the gentle moon. It had already been a week since the Tonks family had welcomed him into their home, and despite the fact that they had done everything within their power to make sure he felt comfortable here, Harry couldn't resolve his uncertain feelings. He didn't think that he ever would.

Tonks had stayed true to her word, dueling with him as often as her job would allow; she worked in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as something akin to an intern, handling paperwork and other such trivialities in the office. Most of the time she complained bitterly about her tasks, but Harry could tell that she was glad to be working with the department even in such a limited capacity.

Their dueling was extremely limited due to the fact that neither of them wanted to spend the summer in St. Mungo's, and they didn't have a healer on hand to handle emergencies. Nevertheless, Harry found the practice enlightening. It allowed him to test himself against someone that would actually make mistakes, and he discovered early on that he was something of a prodigy. Tonks was at once disappointed and completely thrilled to discover that he could hold his own against her for a long time, and occasionally get the upper hand if she wasn't extremely careful.

The rest of his time so far this summer had been spent reading, but now he was out of books.

A knock at his door interrupted his quiet musings, and he looked over his shoulder to find Ted standing at the threshold. "Good evening," the man greeted him, casting his eyes about the somewhat barren interior of Harry's room.

"Your house is very well-situated," Harry complimented him, allowing his eyes to return to the picturesque horizon. "I can hear the ocean from here."

"Relaxing isn't it?" the man agreed, stepping into the room. "How are you settling in?"

"Fine."

Drawing the chair away from Harry's desk, which had only a single closed book resting upon its weathered surface, Ted sank into the chair and scratched his chin. "I was wondering if you might like to give me a hand around the shop, if you had any time beyond your studies this summer. How does that sound to you?"

"Shop?" Harry blinked, turning away from the window at last.

Ted chuckled. "Well, you didn't think I sat around here all day, did you? I own an establishment in Diagon Alley which specializes in the identification and sale of magical artifacts. We deal with all sorts of interesting things."

"What do you need my help for?" Harry eventually asked. It would certainly be convenient to spend time in Diagon Alley, where he had easy access to a bookshop. And Knockturn was only just around the corner.

Perhaps he could finally begin investigating those areas of magic that the Hogwart's Library kept well concealed.

"Nymphadora tells me that you have some trifling familiarity with rune arrays," Ted began, "I thought you might want to continue studying them. Runes are the principal tool of the Enchanter, and a keen understanding of their properties allows me to do my work. Besides, it's always nice to have an extra pair of hands. I had an assistant, but he's just graduated, you see."

Harry nodded and gave the man a smile. "Sounds like fun."


	18. Part 2 Chapter 4

Part 2 Chapter 4

It was sobering to hear this talk of shades once more, after almost six years apart from the business of Mage Hunting. Kings didn't know how he was supposed to feel, or even if he believed the Potter kid's account of events. It was hard to imagine someone like Quirrel, stalwart and as perennial as the stone, succumbing to a damnable shade, and it was even harder to imagine a first-year student at Hogwarts brining him down.

The somewhat outlandish circumstances that had been given as an explanation, while plausible, were highly unlikely. Shacklebolt had known Quirrel well, they had fought and bled together; they _hunted_ together. Few relationships in the world are closer than that which is shared by hunters.

Now he was dead.

Even after spending years apart, it was a hard blow. Shacklebolt's desk outside Amelia's office was stifling now, more than it had ever been before, and Kingsley found himself continually frustrated by his work. It had been comforting to spend most of his time in a desk, feeling his old scars as the seasons passed him by. Let some other headstrong fellow take up the mantle of Hunter, Shack was done. Finished. Retired.

But now it had become unbearable, and Bones noticed. It was a quiet day—quiet week, really—and Kings was just finishing up a few procedural reports, copying them in triplicate, and sending them off by courier to the appropriate heads of the Ministry. A recent raid on a storehouse of Dark artifacts had resulted on three casualties and a big mess. Of course, Kingsley was left with a mop and cleanup duty.

He sighed explosively and leaned back in his ascetic chair, running his hands over the smooth dome of his head for a moment and feeling a thin scar at the back of his head. It was a remnant of his past; a reminder of the trials he had survived as a Hunter.

The sound of a chair scraping across the floor was all the warning he got. He wasn't startled; it took a lot to startle this old sword-hand. His eyes opened and his posture straightened, while one hand poised to draw his wand from its holster upon his wrist, but these were instinctual precautions. His heart continued throbbing at its usual, docile pace, and his eyes swiftly located the source of the interruption.

"Tell me what's on your mind, Shack," Amelia asked, crossing her legs and putting an arm on his desk. She leaned forward amiably, engaging his attention and holding it. Kings considered trying to brush her off, decided it was a lost cause. The woman was persistent as hell.

"It's the whole Hogwarts issue," he replied brusquely.

Amelia nodded. She had a special talent: appearing friendly and attractive while conducting an interrogation more efficient than any of those damn inquisitors from the Department of Mysteries. She was the head of a whole department, a witch with enough combat experience to impress the most hardened veteran of the ICW peacekeepers, and she sat more than a few empty placemats at her table. Kings wouldn't have blamed her for looking her age.

But she didn't.

There was a streak of gray at her temple, a long lock that ducked in and out of the rest of her flowing walnut hair, and enough small lines about her face to indicate maturity, but she had somehow preserved her fitness, and her eyes were always bright. With a few subtle changes in posture, she could appear as inviting as a warm kitten, and just as curious.

Shack wasn't fooled. Not that he had any objections to informality—quite the opposite, really—it was just that he rather preferred for his secrets to stay secrets. And he knew kittens that could scrap with the best of them.

"I know that you were friends with Quirrel," she said while he was lost in his thoughts. "There was nothing that we could have done, really. Dumbledore might have lied under oath, or maybe Potter did, but either way, it isn't expedient to bring the Chief Warlock up on charges of any kind. Short of treason, he'd weasel out unblemished."

"I don't care about that," Kingsley replied, rather more sharply than he had intended. Amelia rolled her shoulders and let the percussive words pass her by. Yet another of her admirable traits. "I _knew_ Quirinus. He wasn't the kind of man to let a shade swindle him out of his soul, and I don't care whose shade it was, whether it be Voldemort or goddamn Merlin himself."

"It had been a long time," Amelia offered. "People change."

"Not that much," Shacklebolt replied darkly, leaning forward. "You've never seen a shade, Bones. _I_ have. Anyone with half a conscience knows to fear them, and nobody but madmen associate willingly with them. I don't care _what_ Quirinus did to himself these last six years. Nobody falls _that_ far _that_ quickly."

"What do you think?"

The wind was stolen right from his sails in another sigh. "Nothing. Hell, I don't know that Potter knew what to think, and he was there, wasn't he?"

They sat, the director and her right-hand, for a long time, thinking. When Kingsley spoke again, it was quiet. "I'm taking a leave of absence. Couldn't hurt to run by some old landmarks, check up on things in the trade. Maybe I can piece together what happened to Quirinus while I'm at it."

"Things have been quiet around here," Bones replied, nodding. She didn't seem to be put off by his somewhat authoritative tone. Kinsley knew that she would have shot him down hard if she disagreed with him, and he relaxed when he perceived her tacit approval. "You haven't taken as much as a half-day since you started. How long were you thinking?"

"A week, maybe two," Kingsley replied, looking far away. He realized after a moment who he was talking to and shrugged.

"I think I can manage that long," the woman replied, smirking. "We got along just fine before you got here."

Remembering the way that the department had run just five years ago, Shacklebolt winced. "I wouldn't say that, ma'am. Respectfully, of course."

"Of course," Bones drawled. "Well? Get on out of here. And come back in one piece, yeah?"

"Yeah," Kingsley reassured her as he stood. "I wasn't planning on anything too dangerous. Except…well, never mind."

Her eyes narrowed a touch, and Kingsley brushed a hand over his robes. She let it go with a wave of her hand, standing up and replacing the chair with one hand. "Are you going to take anyone with you? To Syria?"

Kingsley shook his head. "I'm the only one who knows where that tomb is. I like it that way."

Before she could argue, he departed from his office and made his way through the Ministry to the floo connections. He was already thinking of his first destination as he spoke the address of his house and stepped through the roaring green flames.

* * *

He followed the familiar paths through the rocky hills of a Syrian wasteland, a place entirely devoid of the sort of life that Shacklebolt had become accustomed to in the rolling green hills of Northern England. The air was dry and hot, and the sun was merciless, but for a wizard these things were not much more than a mild inconvenience. Water was not an issue for him, and he was comfortable in his robes due to a series of cooling charms.

He paused upon a ridge, looking down the steeper slope of the opposite side, at the twisting cleft of rock that followed this particular chain of hills and mountains. The sun burned brightly overhead, and still shadows managed to linger below the overhanging stones. Utter, unbroken silence settled over him as he slid his eyes over the horizon, remembering when he had traveled this same journey years ago, in the company of his fellow Hunters.

It was a simple matter for him cross Europe. Alone, he was unobtrusive, and magic allowed him to slip past any of the muggle border guards that might have interrupted him. He had only been forced to stop twice before he had reached Aleppo. There he stayed overnight, and he had traveled swiftly southeast, across the countryside, out to the eastern plateau of Syria.

The various rocky crags and cliffs of the area created something like a natural maze. Shacklebolt took a moment to remember the proper path, feeling the weak breeze against his face as he turned his eyes towards his destination. There would be no obvious landmarks; he had made sure of that the last time he had passed through this place, but so long as his memory didn't fail him completely, he would find his way.

A half-day of wandering brought him to the mass of collapsed sandstone pillars and pulverized rock which sealed the evil within the catacombs beneath his feet. What had once been a memorial fit for a king was little more than an oddity now, hardly recognizable even as the ruin of something more, and Shacklebolt remembered the effort that it had taken him to make it look this way. He and Quirinus had exerted themselves for hours, blasting stones and collapsing walls, shattering glass and pouring sand across the mound. It looked very different now than it had before.

Time and weather had worn down the landmark. Whatever residual magic that might have lingered around the tomb from the wards had faded, and the sand had ground the rubble's hard, jagged edges down to natural contours. It might have been nothing more than another outcropping of stone among thousands.

Kingsley imagined that he could smell the foul stench of the catacombs, but he knew that was impossible. They had unleashed fiendfyre in those depths, and that would have cleansed every nook and cranny of the tunnels below. Had it escaped the stones, the conjured fire might have swept across the landscape for days on end, turning sand to glass and stone to magma in its wake. Judging by the relatively unblemished countryside, Shacklebolt saw that it had not seeped through the pile of rubble.

He hesitated with his wand dangling from his hand. It was already mid-afternoon; did he want to venture into the catacombs at night? It wouldn't matter if the sun was up or not once he was underground, but the prospect made him uneasy. It would probably take him awhile to clear away the entrance…

Eventually, he decided to get it over with. He wasn't looking forward to trudging through the dark, eerie tunnels of the tomb at night, but neither did he fancy the idea of setting camp at the doorstep of this horror. There was no telling what might have come to roost in the remains of the catacombs; six years was enough time to admit some of the more unsavory denizens of the dark, forgotten places of the world.

He began by erecting a series of anti-apparition wards and tying them to a few of the larger bits of sandstone so that they would last longer than a half-hour. He added a few muggle-repelling and intent-based wards, each designed to give him a measure of privacy from inquisitive souls, and when he was finished the desolation of the landscape pressed in on him like a tangible pressure. He faced the rubble stoically for a long time at twilight, wrestling with his sense of foreboding.

Then he raised his wand and began to cast. He took his time with it, only pulverizing those stones that would have been impossible for him to move. He shrank various sections and watched as gravity did the rest, shifting and churning the mound until it slowly began to give way. He had to preserve his strength, so he did not unleash a similar barrage of blasting hexes as he had used to create the seal so long ago, and by the time he had finally cleared away the yawning portal in the earth, the stars were peering down at him inquisitively, and the moon was glaring over his shoulder, illuminating the soot-stained staircase which fell away into shadow.

"Yea though I walk," Shacklebolt muttered, illuminating his surroundings with the pale, white light of magic. This particular variant of _lumos_ was similar to an engorgement charm, since it applied a permanent effect to an object until the counter was applied. Kingsley cast it on his boots so that he would always see the ground before him; it was easier to avoid traps this way. He kept his wand ready and mounted the stairs.

The memories began to return to him in force as he descended, leaving the tranquility of the night sky behind. He saw the brutal scorching along the walls and floor, evidence of the terrible power of fiendfyre, and he wondered if it had totally erased all sign of the terrors that had once lurked in these halls. The staircase eventually terminated in a round antechamber with a low ceiling, and Kingsley came to a halt in the midst of this room, struggling to breathe past his astonishment.

It had been a nightmare the first time, passing through these catacombs. The walls and ceiling were plastered with skulls and other human bones, thousands upon thousands of full skeletons, and the earth around him felt…malignant. Every step he took crushed brittle ashes and scorched bones beneath his weight, and now that each of these bones had been scored, blackened, or twisted by the fiendfyre, the spectacle was _worse._

He felt as if there were invisible, skeletal hands wrapping around his neck, squeezing tighter with each breath. His whole body was screaming at him to turn back; to escape to the surface while he remained capable of flight, but his steely resolve would abide no cowardice.

His jaw clenched, and the words that had so comforted him long ago came to him again, quiet and nearly drowned entirely by the blind terror which had crept upon him.

 _Yea though I walk through the valley and the shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil. For I know that thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. He restoreth my soul and leadeth me down the paths of righteousness._

 _I shall fear no evil._

 _Fear no evil._

Kingsley drew a shuddering breath and walked. Every step was a conscious effort, one foot before the next, and his eyes roved restlessly over the tortured expressions on these dry, scorched bones. The empty eyes followed his every motion.

Gouges had been rent through the walls in some places. Where the fiendfyre's fury had burned more hotly, it had struck out at its earthen prison, shattering the bones and tearing through the sandstone which encased it. The jagged lines of glittering green glass were framed by the hollow, menacing fractures of bone, and Kingsley was forced to look away from the scene as he passed it by. The gentle light from his spell reflected eerily from the gleaming sand.

He followed the twisting maze deeper, deeper, into the bowels of the earth. It was now that his memory failed him. He felt the emergency portkey that dangled from his neck, confident in his escape, but he was beginning to despair. Why had he ever thought to return here, of all places?

By a stroke of luck, or perhaps misfortune, he discovered the largest chamber of the tomb. It was just as he remembered it.

 _They burst through the doors, wreathed in flame. Their enemies, pathetic gaunt men who were little more than the skeletons which decorated the walls of the catacomb, fled before them, screeching in their reedy, gasping voices. A few were cut down mercilessly as they fled, pouring thick blood into the disturbed, corrupted soil. In the fickle light of magic, the blood was black as it welled from ruinous injuries and poured from the decapitated neck of an unfortunate acolyte who had not escaped the biting wand of Quirinus Quirrel._

 _He stood at the head of the company, a leonine figure, framed in a halo of white. Broad shoulders and flapping robes inspired a heroic mien, but it was his furious, swelling power that truly impressed his compatriots. They surged in time with his attack, confident in their victory. And then the shade had come._

 _What could a shade do, really? None of them had been afraid at first; it was incorporeal. A lost soul, a haunting spirit. Like a ghost, they thought that it could do nothing to interact with the living, and they ignored its warnings as they continued to cut down their fleeing opponents. That had been their mistake._

 _At once, the ground had come alive. Bones which had laid lifeless surged upward with grasping arms, pulling the Hunters apart, dragging them to the ground, choking them and twisting their limbs in cruel contortions. Shacklebolt was saved by his reflexes; he pulverized the necromantic conjurations before they could take hold of him, and Quirinus did better. His magic burned away the foul, corrupted corpses before they could come within five yards of his legendary aura._

 _He had turned and pierced Kinglsey with those dark eyes. "Go, I will handle the shade."_

 _Kinglsey heard Quirrel's voice as the man followed the other path, shaking the earth with his spells. "Yea though I walk…"_

 _Crushing another contorted skeleton, Kingsley sought out the cowering dark wizards that had brought them here and set his jaw. There was grisly work to be done._

It looked the same now as it had before. Kingsley saw the flesh-stripped bones strewn throughout the chamber, he saw the clear evidence of fiendfyre on the walls and on the ceiling, but what really drew his attention was the illuminated shrine at the end of the chamber, which had remained untouched. No fire had kissed the gold podium which was ensconced between pillars of stone, and as he stepped warily forward he realized why.

There was a single corpse, a man, curled desperately at the foot of an impressive quartz ward-stone. One skeletal hand was outstretched, towards the podium, where Kingsley saw a skull glaring down at him. It was a flawless example of its kind, save for the fact that there was nothing holding it together. The jaw was unhinged and the rest was crumbling, but each individual part of the whole was immaculate.

It looked fresh. Sickening. There was a moist sheen upon it that could have been the remains of flesh. Kingsley noticed the ward that surrounded it immediately, anchored at that quartz stone, and he realized what had happened.

An acolyte must have erected that ward while the fiednfyre was bearing down on him, clearing out the rest of the catacombs. He must have given his life to complete it, all for the sake of this single shrine.

"You see how loyal he was? To the very last, he fought you, even when all that remained for him was death," the voice so startled Kingsley that he bit out a wide cutting spell as he spun, but it passed harmlessly through the shade and was absorbed by the immovable earth.

"No," Shacklebolt hissed, continuing to backpedal. "Impossible. Quirinus destroyed you."

"Yes, Quirinus," the shade replied. It spoke without noticeable accent, and in fact Kingsley knew that it wasn't really speaking at all. Its voice was nothing more than vibrations in the air, perturbations of the stifling atmosphere, and its meaning was conveyed to him through magic. "He had _such_ a wondrous command of magic. Such discipline. Such…devotion."

The shade swept nearer to Kingsley, who staggered back from it and brandished his wand uselessly before him. His hand clenched around the portkey at his neck, and at once the shade stopped.

"Don't go," it purred. "Not yet. Don't you want to know what happened? Do you want to know why he lied to you?"

Kingsley shook his head, but couldn't speak. The shade didn't laugh, but a profound vibration settled in his chest, and a terrible echo resounded throughout the corridors.

Before his eyes, the shade took shape, twisting and drawing the shadows around itself until it appeared before him as a silhouette of a terrible thing. Then, bit by bit, its features filled out, beginning with the eyes. They were dead, cold, gray eyes, too wide for the face in which they appeared, and Kingsley was paralyzed by them. A chill spread through him, beginning as a pressure in his skull, just behind his eyes, and his hand began to shake.

"What are you?" he whispered.

"I am beyond your comprehension," came the reply. "I am eternal. In spite of your pathetic efforts, I will endure. Quirinus Quirrel realized this, at long last, once he had driven me to the deepest chambers of these catacombs. Do you want to know what he did?"

There was a trap in that question. Kingsley felt the reassuring weight of the portkey around his neck, nodded his head.

 _Quirinus Quirrel's magic died around him as suddenly as it had erupted, disturbing nothing as it fled, and there he stood, stained with dust, blood, and soot, weighed down by his robes, staring at the shade as it taunted him. Without light, there were only various degrees of blackness by which he could identify it, but the repulsion that squirmed in his chest told him precisely where the demon was._

" _How is this possible?"_

" _There are powers in this world that are beyond your limited imagination," the shade replied. "Hunters are the same in every generation. Naïve, misguided fools who seek out that which they do not understand and destroy it. You are all blind."_

 _Quirrel knew the power of this adversary. He knew that he could never hope to defeat it; he had driven it so far into the catacombs in the hopes of trapping it here, with him, thereby protecting the world from its influence. But he could see that it would not do any good for anybody, should he decide to bring down the earth around their ears. This thing was not a physical being, and it would not be hampered by here stone and soil._

" _If I am blind, then open my eyes," Quirrel replied, raising his chin defiantly. "You are nothing more than the ruined soul of a madman, long since forgotten. A dead thing clinging to this twisted mockery of life."_

" _As I said, you are blind. You can see me, but you don't understand. I did not ruin my soul, I_ claimed _it. I claimed the rightful birthright of all mages, I cast aside the limitations of my human body, I have_ ascended, _" the shade insisted._

" _You lie only to yourself."_

" _If it is a lie, then reach out, take my hand. I will open your eyes, as you have asked me to do. Then look upon me, and despair," the shade intoned. It swooped low, hanging in the dark less than a yard from Quirrel's face._

 _He thrust his hand out, through the shade's chest, and screamed._

"You lie," Kingsley whispered. "Quirinus was not so foolish."

The shade did laugh then. "You are all foolish. I showed him a realm so far beyond his own that it broke him. As I knew it would. It was a gift, given freely. Then I let you go. I knew that it would consume him. Tell me what happened to Quirinus, my most promising pupil."

"He's dead," Kingsley replied stonily. "Possessed and killed."

The shade hummed, delighted. "Were you forced to slay him? Your own brother in arms?"

"I have nothing to say to you," Kingsley eventually replied. He turned towards the quartz rune-stone. "That was what saved you before. It will not save you this time."

He cast two spells in swift succession. The first, a blasting hex, and the second, fiendfyre. he hesitated, watching the corona of flame as it surged away from in, feeling the ward as it fell, hearing the enraged scream of the shade as it swept towards him.

He held the cross pendant in his fist. "Christe."

The portkey swept him away.


	19. Part 2 Chapter 5

Part 2 Chapter 5

"Magic is merely an abstract representation of the one who uses it. It is an attribute like the color of your hair or the complexion of your skin. It is the visible manifestation of the soul," El told Harry in his dreams, as he began to instruct his disciple in a spell of dubious morality. "Because there are evil men, it was inevitable that the Dark Arts should come into being. The magic represents its user, and men are tragically flawed."

"If I use evil spells, will it change me?" Harry asked.

"The Dark Arts can only be used by feeding your base impulses. Even the greatest paragon among men could be swallowed up by darkness given the proper circumstances," El explained. "The Dark Arts are a wicked, instinctual thing; they exist in some form or another throughout all of mankind. In magic it is only more blatant, more visceral. It is why I initially warned you against its use. But there is a great difference between truly evil magic and magic used for evil deeds."

Harry nodded his head slowly. He rephrased his question, "Are the Dark Arts responsible for the what Tom Riddle became?"

El shook his head, and around them the world changed. They were standing in a forest, dark and thick, and Harry saw a young boy not many years older than himself striding between the dense, gnarled trunks of the trees. Another boy floated behind him, bound and silenced, and Harry had a sick feeling in his stomach that told him this scene was not going to end pleasantly.

"Tom Riddle was an extraordinary young man," Death whispered. And it _was_ Death now that spoke, for his features had changed from the gentler attributes of El into a more familiar, shadowed visage. "He had such wonderful designs for the world. Growing up in that orphanage, he lived as a tortured soul, and from the moment he spoke with Professor Dumbledore as a young boy, he was driven by the need to make sure that no one ever suffered as he had once suffered.

"He was going to protect people. In his mind, there existed magic powerful enough to safeguard _everyone_ against evil. He believed that people who could not wield magic would never understand it, and he felt that total isolation was the only way to protect children with magic from abuse. His dream was to build a country for magical folk, a safe haven for his own kind," Death's voice was little more than a whisper, but Harry could hear the sorrow that ran powerfully in it, and he didn't dare to interrupt.

"Oh, how I wish that he had never turned to the Dark Arts!" the timeless being exclaimed, gesturing to the scene playing out before them. Harry saw Tom Riddle lower the bound boy to the ground, resting with his back against a tree. There was a malevolent glint in Riddle's eyes that Harry had seen before, in Quirrel's. "He thought that it would give him power enough to make his dreams fact. He thought that if he was strong enough, he could do the things that he had sworn to do and lead the Wizarding World into a golden age. He thought that he could use the Dark Arts to fight evil. In the end, he _became_ the evil that he had intended to fight. Now he perpetuates the same sorrows that he once suffered."

Tom Riddle drew his wand and aimed it at the other boy. Harry saw now that the victim was wearing Slytherin robes; he was young with black hair and gray eyes. His face was cultured and pale; Harry could easily picture the arrogant expressions of nobility upon it. Now, it was a twisted grimace of terror.

A writhing black spell shot from Riddle's wand, tearing the fabric of the dark-haired boy's robes and sinking into his skin like oil. A moment passed where nothing happened, then the boy began to scream. It was a terrible, screeching sound that tore from his throat then, unlike anything that Harry had heard before. The hairs on Harry's arms stood on end, the blood rushed from his face, and eyes widened.

"It is a torture curse," Death murmured. "The spell conjures insects in the victim's belly, which will squirm and bite. Left long enough, he would have been eaten from the inside out."

Riddle finally relinquished the spell and knelt down, a mask of concern on his features. He whispered into the gasping boy's ear, held him by the shoulder in a faintly reassuring manner, and as the scene faded away, Harry felt his own stomach churning.

He exerted his will and was silently thankful that they were dreaming, or else he would have surely lost his dinner.

"So, to answer your question, the Dark Arts _will_ change you. They blacken your soul by degrees, some worse than others. Dealing with demons and tampering with the spirit are the fastest routes to Hell," Death concluded. "But the Dark Arts do not create something which doesn't already exist within you. They are a pitfall, a trap for the unwary, but their insidious nature does not remove the responsibility from the one who uses them. We are all the product of our choices. With that in mind, remember that a disparity exists between spells classified as Dark by law and the Dark Arts."

"How do I know what is truly of the Dark Arts, then?" Harry asked.

"Any spell which feeds on your emotions is dangerous. Such magic encourages its own use. The Patronus charm is widely considered a Light spell because it feeds on your positive emotions. Love, happiness, and joy are examples of things that can produce a patronus. For several hours afterward the user will find himself experiencing the same emotion that he used to cast the spell. Later, he may suddenly discover a desire to cast the spell merely to relive the happy memories which seem so dull in your memory or to see the patronus in all its magnificence. In this case, it is not a terrible thing to indulge these desires unless they become obsessive. But imagine, if you cast a spell that required hatred or sadism…" Death trailed off. "Regarding other magic, which does not feed on your emotions, it is neither good nor evil. Your usage of such magic will determine that. The British Ministry of Magic encounters some spells used for ill and they classify them as Dark, when truly it was the wizard and not the spell that was evil."

"I understand. Do you still believe that I should study the Dark Arts?" Harry bit his lip and folded his arms over his chest. "Even knowing the danger of them?"

"Yes," Death replied simply. He turned and stared solemnly at his student. "For two reasons. Firstly, you will face men so consumed by the Dark Arts that their very flesh is corrupted by its insatiable lust, and their minds warped to nothing. You must know how to confront them when that time comes, and you cannot do so by remaining ignorant. More importantly, I desire to know how strong you are in teh face of temptation. It will become a measure of your good faith."

"I don't know if I want to learn it," Harry whispered. "It frightens me."

"Know this: if you ruin your soul with the Dark Arts, I will hunt you down myself. There is nowhere in this world or any other that you could hide from me. I have stayed my hand in Tom Riddle's case because he was not my sworn servant when he fell. That is not the case with you, and I do not share souls with demons," Death enunciated his words clearly, and Harry glanced up into the dark pools of shadow which served as his eyes. He was relieved, in a way, that this was the case, but the rest of his mind was almost paralyzed in the face of his master's terrible promise.

"I understand."

With that, Death faded away, and Harry's dreams fell into thoughtlessness.

* * *

With an explosive sigh, Harry set the infuriating clay tablet gently upon the surface of his small workbench and closed his eyes. The cuneiform scripts were all starting to bleed together, and Harry knew that it was hopeless for him to continue baffling himself with it for now. He was reluctant to quit the task, however, since it was all that stood between him and his somewhat foolhardy decision to procure some books on the Dark Arts from Knockturn Alley.

He reassured himself by thinking that he would only have to make the one trip. He could buy all the books he needed and hide them somewhere in his expandable trunk. Considering the fact that nearly the entirety of the sizable trunk was filled to the brim with books, he didn't think that it would be all that difficult to conceal a few illegal books within it.

The problem was getting there and back without finding himself in trouble of some description.

"Ted?" He asked, opening his eyes and pushing the tablet just that much farther away from him. The older man glanced up from a quite complicated little globe, which continued to spin under his chin in a slow, preponderous fashion.

"Yes?"

"Can I grab some lunch at the Leaky Cauldron? These runes are turning my brains to mush."

Ted frowned for a moment, then shrugged. "Don't take too long."

All of the proprietors in Diagon Alley knew each other, since they worked so near to one another. The Leaky Cauldron was just at the end of the street, and after work most of the shopkeepers stopped by to mingle. Harry knew that Ted would probably talk to Tom the barkeep eventually, which was why he walked briskly down the alley and grabbed lunch in the form of a small sandwich and a cup of stew.

He ate quickly, glanced at his watch, and departed from the tavern with a jaunty wave to the barkeep.

Slipping into one of the nooks between the stores, Harry transfigured the clothes beneath Death's cloak to black, turned his shoes into boots, and willed his cloak to provide a hood. Drawing the heavy fabric over his head, Harry found that the cloak fell down over his eyes. It didn't impede his vision, however, and Harry took a moment to calm himself before he joined a small crowd of people heading back down Diagon Alley.

He had read all about Knockturn in history books. Nothing prepared him for the experience of ducking under the crumbling stone archway, called the Faerie Arch, and finding himself in a totally different world. He was assaulted by a pungent, moist odor, and the light which had so thoroughly illuminated Diagon died out, choked by the dense configuration of structures that wound through the cramped alley. Occasional beams of sunlight found their way to the ground, illuminating a mossy flagstone, but otherwise shadows and torchlight prevailed.

Hunched, shadowy figures scurried past each other or sat in the crannies formed by the corners of the buildings, and for a moment Harry had reconsidered his plan. He couldn't tell if these people were even human.

One of the figures approached him, and her face was revealed as she ducked past a glowing brazier. "Care for a pie, my dearie?" she asked him, in a low voice. From her cloak she withdrew a bundle of wax paper, and even standing some paces away Harry was repulsed by the stench of its contents.

Harry shook his head briskly, brushing past with an authoritative motion of his arm. He refused to allow himself to be overwhelmed, and he knew that if he allowed people to press in around him, he stood a good chance of having his pockets picked. Or being abducted.

There was a marked difference between the shops and the other structures. Whereas hostels and houses tended to have overshadowed doors and shuttered windows, the stores were brightly illuminated and had signs hanging over their entrances. The doors were still built of old deadwood, pocked in many places by rot, but at least the windows were open.

There was a specific store, called _Adriane's,_ that Harry was looking for. He knew it from a reference title that he had bought at Flourish and Blotts, which had intimated that _Adriane's_ was one of the few places that people could still find old magical texts from before World War II.

Harry found the small shop squeezed between a half-collapsed townhouse and a burned out structure that might have once been a shop of some description. As he passed the charred remains of that building, he saw eyes peering at him through the timbers and shuddered.

Pushing his way through the door, Harry came to a sudden halt when he was confronted by a wall of bookshelves and the white strands of a spider's web.

A web much, much too large to be made by any mundane spider.

"Can I…help you?" a smooth, sensual voice purred from Harry's right. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a woman reclining in a pentagonal web. Her feet rested on the desk, and a book was laid across her long, pale legs. She was wearing a translucent white dress over a black lace brassier. Similar lace looped over a pronounced hip, but the book was situated to hide the rest of her lingerie. Harry couldn't help but flush as he laid his eyes upon her, and he was distracted enough that he wouldn't have seen the rest of her body if it hadn't moved.

Four long, black limbs were curled behind her shoulders. Covered with a rich black chitinous exoskeleton and gleaming in the low light of the shop, each leg played idly along the strands of her web, running wicked points over the twisting silk. Each limb had two parts with a joint in the center. Judging by their range of motion, they must have been flexible at their juncture with her back as well.

The woman was arachne.

"Yes, I'm looking for some books," Harry eventually spoke. The arachne, presumably Adriane, peeled herself smoothly from the web and crawled across the counter until she dropped daintily to her human feet. Two of her darker limbs plucked the book from her lap as it slid, laying it on the table as she gestured to the shelves.

Now that she was standing, Harry could see the intricate lace panty that matched the rest of her ensemble. The black fabric accented her flawless skin perfectly, and Harry fumbled silently for a moment as his eyes sought a place to safely rest. Eventually, he looked at her face through his hood.

"I should hope so," she said, smiling. Her cute little nose twitched with a small breath, and her smile grew, revealing teeth as sharp as the rest of her features. "This _is_ a bookstore. My, but you _are_ a young one."

Harry stiffened. He had hoped, foolishly, perhaps, that nobody would notice. "I have a list here," he drew a slip of paper from his cloak and hesitated, only for Adriane to step close and pluck it from his fingers. She leaned down, as if attempting to see under his hood, and Harry backstopped hastily.

"Oh, no need to be shy," she purred, unfolding the paper as she straightened. Her eyes, however, stayed focused on his, even though Harry knew that she could not truly see them. "Do my features disturb you?"

With those words, the four black limbs at her back extended to their full length, caressing the various strands of the web that seemed to reach every corner of the store. Harry saw that each leg was probably four feet in length. He managed to shake his head just slightly, and the corner of her lip curved in a grin.

"Hmm, what a list this is," Adriane murmured. "And what would a dear boy like you want with these, I wonder?"

"That's my own business," Harry replied, hoping to deter her questions. "Do you have them?"

"Oh yes," Adriane smiled, turning to walk between the shelves. Her human legs took the strides with a lithe grace that was distinctly inhuman, but Harry's eyes were fixed intently at the place where her four spidery limbs joined her back. There was a small section of darkened skin where the exoskeleton of those alien limbs stopped and the more human structure of each joint began.

Harry would have figured them as ball and socket joints, but he didn't know how that would work with the exoskeletal nature of the limbs themselves. Sometimes magical things made no sense at all.

Adriane stopped and looked over her shoulder, tossing her black hair and raising her chin. "Coming?"

Somewhat reluctantly, Harry followed her between the shelves.

Her chitin-plated legs were pulled tight against her back so that they didn't bump into the books, and Harry was fascinated with the way that they responded to the other motions of her body. The four vicious points of her legs twitched occasionally where they rested just above the gentle swell of her bum, and as her slender hands danced over the spines of ancient tomes, the rest of her limbs moved in rhythm with her.

"Ah, _Magick Most Vile,_ " she murmured, drawing the old tome from the shelf and resting her fingers over its cover. "I did so enjoy this one when I was a _young_ temptress."

Turning to him, she presented the book. "There you are, my dear. Don't you think you'd better start with just one? Not everyone has the… _stomach_ for the Dark Arts, you know."

"I do," Harry declared. "I'd like all of them, please."

"Ooh, but you _are_ a such a determined little thing," Adriane cooed, brushing past him. A sweet, intoxicating scent blew past him in her wake, and Harry shook his head minutely to clear it. He followed her as she collected various books, offering her opinion of them as she went, and soon he was carrying quite a stack of darkly bound, thick manuscripts. Some of them were even handwritten.

Harry set them down on the counter and watched as Adriane mounted her web once more. Her angular features turned towards him as she leaned forward, handing by her four arachnid limbs behind the counter.

"That will be three hundred, dear," she said.

Harry frowned. "I counted four hundred twelve," he replied.

The arachne woman laughed brightly. "You're haggling the wrong way, cutie. I gave you a little first-timer discount."

"I see," Harry muttered, drawing a pouch of galleons from his pocket. He had retrieved some money from his trust fund every week so far this summer, each withdrawal the maximum that he could manage according to Gringott's restrictions. It left him with a little over five hundred galleons. He counted three hundred as swiftly as the tedious task allowed and piled them onto the counter in neat stacks of ten, watching as the dark skin above her eyes drew higher and higher in surprise.

When he was finished, she swung towards him just slightly, holding her bottom lip between her very sharp teeth. "My, my, and here I thought you were just playing," sweeping the galleons into a pouch behind the counter, she gestured to the books as her bright eyes locked firmly on his obscured face. "Please do come again, _Mr. Potter_."

Harry stared at her for a long moment, cursing his notoriety, before he slipped his stack of books into a mokeskin pouch that he had procured for just this purpose.

"I'd thank you to keep my visit here quiet," he told the woman after a brief hesitation.

She laughed brightly. "Trust me, cutie, I know the meaning of _discretion._ See you later."

She blew him a kiss as he escaped back onto the street, pausing briefly at the sound of children giggling. He turned his eyes to the burnt out shop, and saw many pairs of little eyes watching him and bobbing excitedly. Drawing his cloak tightly around his shoulders, he hurried though the crowd practically threw himself back into Diagon Alley.

As he returned his clothing to their normal state with hasty motions of his hand, he entirely failed to notice the beetle that fell from his cloak and buzzed happily away.


	20. Part 2 Chapter 6

Part 2 Chapter 6

Lucius Malfoy collapsed into his chair after another mostly useless summit with his political allies in the Wizengamot. Ever since the Daily Prophet had printed the story on the death of Quirinus Quirrel, a scramble had begun on all sides of the government to leverage the shifting public opinion into political capital, and so far, due to the great pains of Albus Dumbledore, it seemed to be working itself toward neutrality.

People could say what they wanted about Dumbledore, but the man was a shrewd political strategist, and one that was almost fatalistically devoted to the status quo. A reactionary in every sense of the word, he played the Wizengamot like a fiddle, tossing factions against each other and inspiring partisanship at every turn, if only to ruin the chances of any singular group passing a relevant Bill into an Act of the Wizengamot.

As the de facto leader of the Light faction, he had alienated powerful names like Greengrass and Breathnach, and pandered to relatively meaningless families. The Weasley family was an example of a family that existed in government at the pleasure of Albus Dumbledore; although they had long been represented in the Wizengamot, recently their patriarchs had been squandering the family's wealth in embarrassing diversions. It had ruined their reputation and their vaults.

Arthur Weasley was the latest in a long line of blithering idiots, to say it simply.

The other factions in the Wizengamot were a) the Traditionalists, who sought to protect magical culture and practices in Britain against the disastrous reforms proposed by the Light faction and the cultural drift resulting from muggleborn witches and wizards, b) the Naturalists, who proposed a complete overhaul of Magical law to reclassify branches of magic in an attempt to preserve what they called 'the natural order,' and c) the Progressives, who sought to reform Magical Britain into muggle Britain.

The only faction which didn't have a distinct platform was the Light faction, and that was because they were a useless bunch of nattering blowhards who were surviving on a toxic mixture of irrational fear and ancient history. It was no surprise that they were led by a wrinkly old fossil better suited to the nineteenth century graveyard that he had been excavated from than the seat of Chief Warlock.

The Traditionalists were the second most powerful group in the Wizengamot, but they were incapable of presenting any kind of organized opposition to the tomfoolery proposed by the Progressives and the Lights because they lacked a unifying force. Nobody was willing to claim the power vacuum left behind by the utter humiliation of the Black family throughout the course of the last war. It was a hard sell, admittedly, considering the hostility of the current Wizengamot towards Traditionalist sentiments, and Lucius was certainly not going to take the position himself.

He preferred a quieter sort of power than grandstanding in the Wizengamot and attending social events with a silver crown on his head and a target on his back.

Lucius tossed a stack of parchment onto his desk in disgust, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to quell the headache that was forming at the backs of his eyes.

Sometimes, he cursed the name Lord Voldemort. If the megalomaniac hadn't seen fit to personally ruin the Blacks and unintentionally destroy at least twelve other Pureblood families, then perhaps the current situation wouldn't be as dire.

Thinking the name drew his eyes to that solitary bookshelf in his office, which had stood untouched for months, gathering dust. The house elves refused to clean it, which was sensible of them, considering what it contained. Most of the titles held therein were innocuous remnants of Lucius' younger days, when his father had bought him a library of history books and treatises to teach him the knowledge and skills required of a Malfoy Head of House. But there was one book, a brown hardcover with an unmarked spine, that was so much more.

Malfoy stood before his bookcase with his hand against that book, wondering when he had gotten out of his chair, and the next thing he knew he was opening the legacy of Lord Voldemort and laying it gently upon his desk.

"Did you miss me, Lucius?" came the voice that Malfoy had sincerely hoped never to hear again. Closing his eyes, he slowed his racing heart and turned in his chair to face the Dark Lord.

A coiled black mass hung suspended in the center of Lucius' office, with a horrible face peering from the depths of shadow. If it were possible, Lucius' face grew paler, and his breath stilled upon his lips. "My…my lord Voldemort?"

"It is I," the terrible _thing_ agreed, its voice low and sibilant. "You have done well to safeguard my diary, Lucius. I hope that you have not suffered unduly in my absence?"

"No, I…I've carried on," Malfoy managed to whisper. The spirit chuckled darkly.

"Yes, I saw how you denied me before the Wizengamot, Lucius," Voldemort hissed. Malfoy closed his eyes, silently making peace with the events of his life. "Oh, do not tremble so. It was _good._ I am glad that at least one of my closest followers was cunning enough to escape Azkaban. You have created an impressive sphere of influence while I have been abroad."

Having nothing to say, Lucius nodded his head slowly, managing to keep his face passive through years of diligent practice in the art of misdirection.

"We have work to do," Voldemort continued. "I expect that you will assist me now, as you did when we were younger?"

An insistent burn made itself known on Lucius' left forearm, and he swallowed. As if he had a choice. "Of course, my Lord."

"Good," Voldemort hissed. "Very good. Our activities now will be much more suited to your tastes, Lucius. I know you were never as fond of our _revelry_ as the others, much preferring the false comfort provided by your much limited ideals of _honor._ Well, it should please your craven spirit, I imagine, to know that this will be a quieter campaign than my last. _"_

"My lord, I…"

"Do not lie to me," Voldemort cut him off. The squirming shadow pulsed powerfully, flashing red. "It is better for me now that your mind is sharper than your sword. Our game must be a subtle one, a thing of whispers and shadow. The new era shall not be heralded by a war, but by the dying whimper of the only person standing between us and greatness. And it begins…with this."

The shade swooped low, and the open diary slammed shut. A cold gust of air disturbed the parchment on Lucius desk, and he laid his shaking hand upon the unblemished cover of the small, unassuming book. A moment passed as Voldemort's orders buried themselves into his mind, incontrovertible and compelling. When his heart finally slowed to a reasonable pace, Lucius swept the book into his hand and departed from his office.

* * *

Draco was startled by a knock on his bedroom door, and he rushed to answer it after stopping to throw a robe over his shoulders. He wrenched it open, a biting reprimand on the tip of his tongue, aimed at the poor elf who had been foolish enough to disturb him, but it died with a whimper when he saw his father there, dressed in expensive robes and holding his silver cane in his hand. Dobby gave him a wide-eyed look from behind Lucius' legs and popped away with little more than a soft _pop._

A smile, saccharine and perfectly false, spread across the older man's face. "Draco, may I come in?"

"Of course," Draco stepped aside, pulling his robe around himself and tying it swiftly as his father stepped into his room. The man glanced at Draco's bed, which was a mess of tangled sheets, and curled his nose.

"Are you looking forward to your second year at Hogwarts?" Lucius asked as he pointedly diverted his eyes to wander aimlessly over the books on his son's shelves. Draco shrugged.

"I suppose," he replied. "It is all rather elementary."

"Of course it is. What did you expect from a ministry approved curriculum?" Lucius agreed, turning his sharp gray eyes to his son. "You are not there to learn magic, my son. Hogwarts is the place to build lasting alliances; it is the beginnings of the next generation's politics. Your peers will grow up and shape the Wizarding world, for good or for ill. Your task, Draco, is to leverage their ambitions to your benefit."

Draco nodded. He had heard this a thousand times. "I know."

They sat down at a small coffee table beside the bookshelf, and Lucius spent a moment inspecting his nails. Eventually, the silence was broken as he asked, "What do you think of Harry Potter?"

Draco hesitated just briefly. "I don't really know. He holds the respect of the entire school, and yet he does nothing with it. He has demonstrated a prodigious affinity for violence, but he never threatens anyone. He spends all of his time avoiding people and reading books."

"Have you spoken with him?" Lucius asked.

"I tried to establish a rivalry early in the year," Draco replied tentatively. "I hoped that I could make a reputation for myself that way, since he is such a visible public figure, young as he might be. We argued once, but he never engaged beyond that."

"That was when he declared himself the Heir of Slytherin?" Lucius asked softly, a half-smile on his face. "Quite a presumptuous claim."

"Yeah," Draco agreed. "I'm almost glad our rivalry didn't pan out. In the course of a year he took down Nott, injured Pellmore while fighting five wizards at once, got Flint expelled for the same incident, and killed Professor Quirrel in single combat."

"A very violent record," Lucius observed, sounding almost…pleased.

"What's this about, father?"

"I believe that Harry Potter could become a very dangerous force in the Wizengamot. Albus Dumbledore intends to use him and his reputation to destroy the Traditionalist faction," Lucius explained. Of course, Dumbledore intended nothing of the sort, being a reactionary, but Draco wouldn't know that and the fear would serve to motivate him. "I thought that I would see what you think about him. It pays to know your enemies, as you well know."

"Oh," Draco said, nodding his head and biting his lip. "He doesn't seem to spend all that much time with Dumbledore."

"He doesn't have to," Lucius explained. "His guardians were appointed by Dumbledore. And so long as people go on believing in the Boy-Who-Lived, he can be used against us."

Draco had a feeling that he knew where this was going. "And?"

"I have a plan intended to discredit him," Lucius declared. He drew a thin hardcover book from his robe and laid it on the table.

"I don't understand," Draco muttered.

"You mustn't," Lucius replied. He leaned forward in his chair. "It would be dangerous for you to know the details. All you have to do is take this book with you to Hogwarts and leave it somewhere that students might stumble over it. _No one_ can know that you ever touched it. Not even your mother."

Draco blinked and glanced at the innocuous volume, wondering what it might contain that had scared his father. Lucius Malfoy was afraid of nothing, and here he was, with a feverish tint in his eyes as he spoke of a book. "Okay," he agreed quietly. "I'll do it."

"Good," Lucius replied. He reached up and removed the silver pendant that hung from his neck, holding it out by the chain. "And you will wear this at all times throughout the year."

It was an old family heirloom, a remnant of their Norman ancestry. Silver wrought in the form of a raven, it was meticulously engraved with thousands of miniscule runes, and Draco had never, ever seen his father without it.

"Are you sure?" Draco asked, holding it close to his chest with both hands.

Lucius gave him a thin smile. "My occlumency is not so terrible that I cannot survive a single year without that pendant. Wear it, and no one will be able to read your thoughts. Not even your godfather could pierce the protection provided by that amulet."

"So I can't tell him about this either?"

"Never," Lucius replied sharply. "Not a soul. This will be _our_ secret, Draco. Do not send me any owls until you've completed your task. If I receive a letter from you, I will know that you succeeded. I don't think I have to tell you, but don't write anything about this matter down on anything. _Especially_ letters carried by Hogwarts owls."

Draco nodded seriously and slipped the pendant over his neck. "I won't fail."

Lucius stood, tapping the ground with his cane. As he reached the door he hesitated. "Never open that book, Draco," he insisted quietly. "Swear to me that you won't."

Draco did, and his father left him alone with newly troubled thoughts.

* * *

It was hard to find the time to study the Dark Arts between all the rest of the things that Harry wanted to learn. When Death had originally commanded him to learn all that he could about magic he hadn't really grasped the scope of the task that had been set before him, but now that he had spent a year barreling through the Hogwarts library, he realized that he had a lifetime's worth of reading left to do, and even then he might never grasp all the intricacies of magic.

Over the summer he focused mainly on regenerative magic and runes, but he kept on practicing his combative spells as often as he could manage it. Whenever he slept, Death continued to hone his skills with the spear and shield, while providing insight into the more difficult aspects of the spells that he was learning. There wasn't as much theory behind the magic he learned, but it all required practice, and that was what took most of his time.

That and working on Nymphadora's staff.

The Dark Arts were a departure from the norm, however, in that Harry only ever read about theory, and never dared to cast the spells. What he read was enough to give him nightmares, and he didn't figure that casting the magic would do him any favors in that regard, since Death had already warned him that the Dark Arts were more than a little addicting. Every spell required a certain emotion, and the spell itself inspired emotion, which precipitated a savage cycle.

It explained Snape's bad attitude, that much was certain.

Hunched over _Magick Most Vile,_ Harry remained entirely alert, just in case he had to hide the book quickly, while his eyes roamed over the pages.

Some of the magic contained within didn't relate to spells, which was refreshing honestly, because there were only so many torture curses that one person needed to know before it all started to seem redundant. Other aspects of the Dark Arts related to ritualistic summoning and binding of demons, the brewing of elixirs to enslave the minds of others, the usage of alchemy to enhance and transform your own body, the construction of powerful blood-infused wards, and the art of the taboo.

Quirrel had hinted that Voldemort once placed a taboo on his name, and now Harry knew exactly how he had done it. He also knew the counter to the technique, but he wasn't about to use it without speaking with Death first.

It was interesting how the two most iconic aspects of Voldemort's reign-the dark mark and the taboo on his name—were so very elementary when it came to the Dark Arts. Both of those techniques were contained in _Magick Most Vile,_ and Harry could probably have replicated their effects even now, having read about them once.

The dark mark was a ritualistic binding that was sealed with a murder. It was soul magic, and it tied the soul of the servant to the master in an irreversible fashion, allowing the master to summon, punish, or command his followers from any distance without delay. The ritual itself was very simple: it began with a tattoo of any shape carved with a ritual blade into the skin. A specific incantation was spoken over the tattoo and a drop of the master's blood was added to the location of the mark. Then, the follower would commit a murder within twenty-four hours, and the mark would manifest itself. The only difficulty part was the preparation of the ritual blade; that was complex enough that Harry skipped over it.

Voldemort's methods were so very elementary. So what was it about Voldemort that made him a Dark Lord? His mastery over the Dark Arts wasn't immediately apparent, although his love of the Unforgivables and his usage of torture curses were both indicative of his willingness to use dark magic whenever the occasion presented itself. It appeared to Harry that Voldemort had been more of a political mastermind than a magical one, since he never managed to strike Dumbledore down in single combat even at the height of his power.

It made him feel better about his chances, honestly.

Harry turned the page and began reading about yet another sacrificial rite which would summon a demon and bind it to the corpse of the one who was sacrificed, creating an abomination that may or may not actually follow the commands of the summoner. Characteristics of the ritual included the use of a bronze dagger, the runic arrangement of the engravings on the floor, and the requirement that the sacrifice be a human male between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.

It explained that the creature which resulted from the ritual was useful mostly as a terrorist's implement of choice, since it could hardly be relied upon to follow detailed commands, and usually had as much hatred for its master as it did everyone else.

The images that were helpfully provided by the text displayed a half-rotting corpse cheerfully beating a helpless old man into a pulp with its bare hands.

Feeling somewhat queasy, Harry was just about to close the book and find something else to study when a loud _crack_ from behind his chair caused him to jump almost three feet into the air.

"Merlin's saggy balls!" he exclaimed, shoving the book into its mokeskin pouch as he spun around to face the intruder with his transformed staff held nimbly between his hands. The wicked points of the spearhead glinted in the moonlight as he leveled it straight towards the oblong face of the diminutive elf that had appeared in his room, and its eyes widened dramatically when it saw the danger it was in.

"Oh, mercy!" it wailed, covering its face with its bony fingers. "Dobby begs you!"

Harry hesitated for a moment, before prodding the elf roughly. It screeched in fright and collapsed into a ball. "Who are you?"

"Oh, great master Harry Potter, sir, Dobby didn't mean no harm! Promise! Don't hurt Dobby!"

With a long-suffering sigh, Harry withdrew his spear and sat down in his chair again, facing the elf. "Alright, get a hold of yourself and sit down, please."

The elf peeked at him from under his arms with tears gathering in his huge gray eyes. "No wizard ever asked Dobby to sit before," he whispered. "Truly, the great Harry Potter is as good and gracious as they say!"

After a great deal of cajoling and a conjured chair, the elf sat down and gazed adoringly at Harry Potter with his tiny legs swinging freely. "The great and wonderful Harry Potter must not return to Hogwarts," the elf declared, quite loudly.

"And why is that, then?" Harry asked. For a moment, the elf simply blinked at him, chewing on his lip feverishly, but then he surged up until he was standing on his chair, teetering dangerously, before diving headfirst into the floor with a great _THUMP!_

Harry staggered to his feet, aghast, as the elf crawled dazedly to its feet and went to mount his chair once again. It was only when the young wizard reached out and lifted Dobby up by his pillowcase that the elf seemed to remember where he was, and when he met Harry's confused, rather irritated expression he began to wail again.

"Oh, Dobby is a bad, bad elf! Such a bad elf! Dobby is closing his ears in the oven for a week after this, oh yes!" he blabbed, shaking his head frenetically.

"There will be none of that behavior while you're in my presence," Harry ordered, placing Dobby into his hair. "Don't move from that seat."

Dobby swallowed his words as Harry pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

Taking his seat again, Harry stroked his chin slowly, trying to find some sense in what could very well pass as a crazed hallucination induced by reading too many books about the Dark Arts.

"Why shouldn't I return to Hogwarts?" he asked, although he was loth to set the excitable elf blubbering again.

The question seemed easy enough to answer, however, since the elf only bobbed his head with flapping ears. "Terrible things be happening this year," Dobby intoned. "Terrible things."

"What kind of terrible things?"

Seeing the elf begin to eye the corner of the desk rather suggestively, Harry rushed to find a new line of questioning.

"Don't you trust me to take care of myself while I'm at Hogwarts? How could I become the great wizard that I have to be if I don't go to school?"

"Harry Potter is a great wizard already," Dobby told him, almost in a scolding fashion. "It would be much too dangerous for him to return to Hogwarts this year. He should pick and choose his battles, oh yes."

"I can't just skip a year of Hogwarts," Harry told the elf seriously. "If you'll tell me what to look for, I would be much safer."

"Oh, but Dobby can't. Dobby would but Dobby _can't!"_ he cried, banging his fists against his thighs.

Harry waited for the elf to calm himself, made a great show of thinking deeply, and heaved a sigh. "Alright," he said. "I'll agree not to go to Hogwarts if you tell me which family you serve."

The elf's cheeks blew out and his little fists clenched. For a moment, he shook his head, ears flapping wildly, before he closed his eyes. "Dobby cannot…" he whined.

"Then it looks like I am going to Hogwarts," Harry replied easily. He narrowed his eyes when Dobby got a determined glint in his wide eyes.

"Dobby will have to protect the Great Harry Potter some other way," he said resolutely, raising his finger beside his head. With a final nod, he disappeared, and Harry sat back in his chair with a headache forming at the base of his skull.


	21. Part 2 Chapter 7

Part 2 Chapter 7

Lightning gathered in a cackling mass at the very end of Harry's staff, reaching down towards his hand with long, spidery tendrils. Harry gestured with his free hand, and the energy discharged with a _bang,_ ionizing a path through the air and connecting with the tree stump that he had been using as a target. The spell didn't make contact and die out, like most directly targeted curses, and the tether of jumping blue light holding Harry to his target remained, occasionally reaching out towards the ground and burning curious patterns into the grass. The stump blackened slightly under the onslaught, but was otherwise unmoved.

Harry held the _sussurus_ for forty seconds before allowing the magic to slip through his fingers. The gem in his staff blazed briefly as the last dregs of power expended themselves, before the lightning disappeared with a _pop_ and the faint smell of ozone.

"Most impressive," Death congratulated him from where he stood. "Your endurance has much improved."

Harry shook his head slightly, knowing that even after weeks of practice with Tonks and Death's personal instruction, he still would fail to defeat anyone as skilled as Quirrel had been. Thinking of the man who had been possessed by Voldemort, Harry's brow furrowed and a burning question laid heavy on the tip of his tongue. Glancing at the dark apparition of his master, Harry couldn't bring himself to speak it.

"Go on," the timeless being urged him. "I shall not be offended."

"Why did you end Vernon when he threatened me, only to stand aside while Quirrel did worse than Vernon ever could have done?"

"Ah," Death nodded, a small smile on his face. "I knew that this day would come. Walk with me."

Allowing his staff to fall back into its unassuming disguise, Harry closed the distance between them to take his place at Death's side. They walked, slowly, along the crest of a hill, in companionable silence. At long last, they came to a high bluff overlooking the sea, and there they stopped.

"As El, my greatest desire for mankind is to know them truly, to share my creation and guide my children with a loving hand," Death began. "Inevitably, because I desired to give men free will, there would be those who would choose to oppose me. The way of this corrupted world is evil, and yet I must deal justly with all men. How could I profess to love my children, if I do not discipline them? And so I must treat worldly men by the ways of the world, rather than the ways of the spirit."

Harry sighed, leaning on his staff. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Vernon had made his choice. His heart had no room for love," Death explained simply. "The timing of his death didn't matter; it was the same in all times and all places. You see time like a single current, but I see the ocean. Quirinus Quirrel was a good man who had been subdued by an evil greater than he could hope to defeat. I could not strike him down when his destiny had not yet run its full course."

"I killed him," Harry replied accusingly. "You _knew_ that I would kill him. And you let me suffer anyway."

"I let _you_ determine Quirrel's fate," Death answered him. "You would not be who you are today without that experience."

"What about Tom Riddle? Hasn't he made his choice?" Harry pressed. "Or do you also hope for his redemption?"

"Alas, he is lost to me," Death replied solemnly. He looked down at Harry with his fathomless black eyes. "If, by his accursed life and inevitable death, I might deliver my gifted children from their own folly, then I shall suffer him to linger another day in this world. _You_ are my justice, Harry. When you strike him down it will be just as if my own hand had crushed his black heart to dust. My direct intervention would be a disservice, for it would deprive your country the opportunity it needs to become stronger."

Harry opened his mouth to respond when he heard a distant voice calling for him. He hesitated, anxious to clarify the things that Death had said, but when he glanced over the robed figure was gone, and he was alone on the cliff's edge.

 _I wonder what it would feel like to fall?_

He turned away, and walked towards the voice. Moments later, he saw Nymphadora on the crest of a hill, waving her arms.

"Wotcher, Harry!" she greeted him once he was nearer. It was then that Harry saw another woman, and he greeted her as well as Tonks. "This is Amanda. She doesn't believe that you're as good as I've made you out to be, so I thought she could officiate a duel between us. It'll make the last one before school starts a proper contest. What do you say?"

Harry shrugged. Even though he had already practiced magic today, he felt nearly at his full strength, and was eager to test himself without the restrictions that Tonks had insisted upon. "Will you use your staff?"

Tonks shook her head. Harry had finished it for her a short time ago; and he had to admit that it was much more difficult without El sitting beside him for every step of the process. Her staff was shorter, and couldn't transform in the same way as Harry's, but it acted the same in all other respects.

"I haven't decided if I want to lose my wand," she replied. Harry nodded carefully, understanding her hesitation.

"You are a healer?" he asked Amanda.

She nodded. "I'm the one that'll patch you up when Tonks is through with you. You know the rules of a duel?"

"No," Harry replied, rolling his shoulders. Tonks gave him an excited grin and danced a few paces away from him while Amanda explained the basics.

"You start when I say," Amanda began. "The duel ends when one of you is incapacitated or incapable of continuing. Obviously, don't cast Unforgivables or Dark magic. You two should know each other's limits, so try not to kill each other. Got it?"

Harry allowed his staff to assume its natural state. Seeing Amanda's rather surprised expression, he also changed Death's cloak to a tight, black vest with a tall collar. She stepped back and Tonks saluted him with her wand. Harry bowed at the waist, quirking an amused grin when she pulled her own transformation.

Her typical athletic form was tall, muscle-bound, and intimidating. Her hair was short and black, her skin tan and her features square. She now bore very little resemblance to the feminine beauty that he had met on the train.

It would be a tense competition. Harry knew that he could surprise Tonks several times with the spells in his arsenal, since it had grown to be quite diverse over the last year, but she was familiar with his habit of sidestepping towards his stiff leg, and she knew that she could outlast him because of his younger magical core and her ability to assume a highly athletic form.

Amanda started them with a short countdown, and Tonks wasted no time in unleashing a volley of silent curses in his direction. Harry hardly even shifted his staff as he erected a general deflector and weaved some simpler shields closer to his body. They were small enough that he could cast around them, and weak enough that they didn't tire him too quickly when he sustained them.

Death had always told him to dodge first and block second, but with his somewhat impaired mobility be rather preferred the opposite. It certainly handicapped his offensive capabilities, but Harry had honed his defensive skills to near perfection, and it took quite a bit of effort to break through his layered shields unless he wanted them to fall.

Harry's first offensive spell was the _sussurus_ shield-breaker. It was primarily intended to startle Tonks, and if he was honest there was a measure of pride behind his choice as well. It certainly would have been more effective if he had led with a series of less intensive curses.

Harry whispered the incantation so that neither she nor Amanda could hear it, and sidestepped the latest of Tonks' attacks just as he dropped his final shield.

When he unleashed the lightning which had gathered at the blade of his spear, it burst forward in a chaotic storm of jagged lines, crashing against Tonks' hastily conjured shield and wrapping around it like a clenched fist. A terrible shrieking noise cleaved the air and shook the ground before a blinding flash marked the collapse of Tonks' shield. The lasso of lightning constricted, finding another, stronger shield this time, and Tonks managed to raise an earthen wall between them to cut off Harry's line of sight before the lightning could reach her through it. He cancelled his attack and cast a battery of three banishers, demolishing the wall and forcing Tonks to sidestep.

She retaliated by conjuring a cloud of pebbles and banishing them in his direction. Harry diverted the hail of projectiles with a planar barrier and cast an old Roman spell which mimicked the action of a ballista. Harry was relieved that Tonks' shield managed to absorb the long pulsing lance of orange flame without falling. Had it pierced her, the damage it would have done to her would have been substantial. Shaken by his own actions, Harry reined himself in and engage in an entirely harmless exchange, acting primarily in defense.

Tonks was flagging quickly, relying on traditional dueling techniques to wear down his immaculate defenses, and Harry could feel the strain of the _sussurus_ in his limbs as he began casting a bevy of small deflectors in the path of her spells. Traditional shields such as _protego_ and the Eastern equivalents absorbed magic rather than redirecting it. Harry's shields required less effort to sustain, but were harder to cast. Such shields were not typically used by modern magic-users because they were not really very effective against spells like _incendio, sussurus,_ or _fiendfyre_.

Of course, the other reason was related to the recent magical wars. Most of the combat had taken place in cities or on crowded battlefields where the Statute of Secrecy was a concern. And directing enemy spell-fire into your allies was always frowned upon.

Tonks adjusted her strategy by closing distance with him, which increased the tempo of their duel. Harry grinned and palmed the shrunken shield that he had made with Ted's assistance, easily matching the pace of her spellcasting. He allowed her to think that he was struggling to keep up with her, back-stepping in time with her advance, until he conjured a purposefully weak deflector and enlarged the shield in his hand.

She rattled off a combination of white, red, and yellow spells, still casting silently, and the first two were diverted successfully. Harry leaned into her magic, angling his spear towards her and circling left as he successfully weathered the attack on his enchanted shield.

Now, in close quarters, Death's insistence on weapons training paid off. Harry prepared lightning on his staff to prompt a defensive spell from Tonks, vaulted a wide curse aimed at his ankles, and barreled into her with his shield. As she staggered he rammed the rim of the wide wooden disc into her jaw, snapping her head up. She blew him away from her with a wide-area banishing curse, and he rolled with the force of her magic, coming up shakily on his feet with lightning pulsing thickly around the glowing gem in his staff.

Tonks regained her feet just in time for her shield to shatter under the force of Harry's _sussurus._ The lightning's pulsing tendrils gripped her body and lifted her partially from the ground, crawling over her robes and filling the air with a concussive screech as magic pulsed between them.

Harry wrested his power back the moment a scream touched her lips, and the lightning sloughed from her body onto the grass, crawling back to him and gathering around his arms before it faded into smoke.

Tonks collapsed the moment her feet touched the ground, and Amanda rushed to her side. The pink-haired auror trainee waved her away after a moment of panting, searching the ground for her wand.

Harry tentatively approached them, wearing his usual cloak and bereft of his weapons once again. "Are you alright?"

Tonks snorted. "What the hell did you cast?"

"I'd like to know that as well," Amanda seconded, eying at him warily.

"It was a shield-breaker curse," Harry replied honestly. "I've been waiting for a good time to try it."

" _That_ was no shield-breaker," Amanda scoffed. "You're lucky it didn't kill her!"

Tonks put her hand on her friend's arm. "It might have hurt like the dickens, but it only inflicted minor burns," she soothed. "And let me tell you, it taxes your shields like nothing I'd ever felt before. Where did you learn it?"

"It was in that book on the Etruscans," Harry replied. "I'm sorry. The author said that it was unpleasant, but I knew that it wasn't lethal or even very dangerous. Not unless it's held for a lot longer, at least. A banisher would have felt worse for you."

"You took me by surprise with that shield. Did my dad help you with it?" Tonks told him as she stood, gesturing at his off-hand. Harry noticed that her whole body was shaking quite violently, and apparently Amanda did as well.

"I'd like to see that book of yours, if you don't mind," she told him primly.

Tonks waved her off. "Oh, come off it, Amanda. You don't see _me_ being a sore loser, and I'm the one that took the spell!"

Harry and Tonks chatted about their duel all the way back to the house, valiantly ignoring the suspicious looks that Amanda was sending his way. Once they were back, she checked Tonks over once again before she left, but not without having a whispered conversation with Nymphadora.

Harry could guess the gist of it. Probably warning Tonks to keep an eye on him, report any suspicious activity to the DMLE, and to call a healer if she didn't stop trembling within a couple of hours.

Tonks dismissed her with good humor and apologized to him about it, but Harry knew that she wasn't as comfortable with the incident as she seemed. Harry encouraged her to consider using the staff he had made for her and let the matter rest, but he never once saw her cast a spell with the staff rather than her wand.

* * *

Platform 9 ¾ was crammed from the wall to the rails with a pulsating mass of anxious parents and frenzied children, and Harry would have expected to find himself somewhat anonymous as a result of the crowd. Instead, anyone within twenty yards in every direction continued to look at him and talk in low voices, as if it really made a difference whether or not he could hear what they were saying. He hated this, standing out in the middle of a sea of stranger, like some kind of circus attraction, and he could tell that the Tonks family was quite unused to the attention as well.

Andromeda had her hand on his shoulder, squeezing him reassuringly, but when he looked up at her face he saw mirrored in her eyes the same discomfort that plagued him.

So it was with great relief that he noted the Hogwarts Express in all of its antiquated glory puffing its way into the station, met by an energetic rush of excitement as students of all ages faced the coming year with an array of emotions from sophomoric optimism to cold dread.

Harry thanks Ted and Andromeda for a wonderful summer, promised to write, shrugged off a few hugs, and proceeded to shoulder his way through the crowd as swiftly as he could manage without losing his stacked trunks, which levitated low against the ground behind him. One benefit of his fame was the fact that everybody seemed to know where he was at all times, and a path had cleared for him in short order.

He found himself an empty compartment, stowed his luggage with a lackadaisical wave of his hand, and fell heavily onto the bench. After a brief moment of hesitation, he cast a weak compulsion on the door to discourage the odd passerby from poking their head inside.

Technically, it was against the rules to use magic on the train, but Harry knew that they couldn't pick his magic out from the rather incredible array of enchantments that pulsed under his very feet, keeping the train running and invisible to muggles. He figured if the prefects could spot his little ward, then they deserved to hand him a citation. It was a rather obscure…

The door to his compartment opened suddenly enough to startle Harry from his musings, and he blinked in surprise when he saw a little blonde girl leading her ginger friend past his compulsion. "Just through here, see," she was saying. She paused when she noticed him. "Oh. Hello there."

"Hi," Harry muttered, folding his arms in disappointment. Had he cast the spell incorrectly?

"Wait," the redheaded girl exclaimed. "That door wasn't there a moment ago!"

"Yes it was," the blonde replied lightly. "Are you Harry Potter?"

The boy in question sighed and rose to offer his hand. "Charmed," he said dryly as she took his hand and shook quite energetically.

"Luna Lovegood, at your service," the girl introduced herself, dropping his hand. She turned and waved a pale hand at her gob-smacked friend. "That's Ginny Weasley. We're neighbors."

Harry would have shaken her hand as well, but she didn't seem to be responding, so he focused on Luna instead. "How did you like my spell?"

"On the door?" Luna clarified. "Oh, it was quite nice. I thought that a hobgoblin had snuck onto the train when I saw it."

The Weasley girl seemed to shake herself from her stupor. "I'm sorry, Harry, we'll just find another compartment."

She tugged Luna's arm insistently. Harry sat down and leaned back. "If you leave now, then you'll reveal the door."

At that, Luna sat down promptly, almost dragging Ginny into the seat with her. Harry smiled and tapped the ground with his staff, lifting their trunks onto the racks with a silent levitation charm.

"Your magic is very beautiful, Harry," Luna complimented, to which he responded with hesitant thanks.

"What do you know of hobgoblins? Are they related to the proprietors of Gringotts Bank?" Harry asked. It appeared to him that this young girl was more than she appeared to be, if she could not only see the ward on the door, but also his active magic. Perhaps the creatures of which she spoke were simply rare or difficult to see.

Luna shook her head. "Distantly enough to be ignored, I think. Goblins don't really enjoy being reminded of the fact."

Ginny looked back and forth between them with a confused look on her face.

"I see. I haven't heard of them before."

Luna shrugged. "Nobody can see them. It's part of their curse," she explained. A dreamy smile pulled at her lips, and her wide blue eyes blinked slowly. "Well, maybe _you_ can."

"You'll have to forgive Luna," Ginny interjected. "Her imagination is very active."

Harry raised his eyebrow. "It's quite alright. You're related to Ronald Weasley?"

She nodded. "He's in Gryffindor."

Harry played for a moment with the fabric of his cloak, searching for something to say. He was about to speak when Luna interrupted him. "I was sorry to hear about Quirinus Quirrel. My father used to know him, you know. They traveled in the same circles."

"It was a bad situation," Harry replied with a hard voice. Luna either wasn't aware that she'd chosen an uncomfortable topic of conversation, or she just didn't care.

"It really doesn't seem like something that he would have done," she said, peering at him with an innocent expression. "Stealing the Philosopher's Stone."

Ginny gasped and held a hand over her mouth, looking aghast at the girl sitting beside her. Harry's face lost all semblance of a pleasant expression, and his eyes flashed as he leaned forward. "You shouldn't believe everything that you read in the paper," he warned softly.

Luna shook her head, eyes wide and startled. "I didn't mean to imply…" she trailed off, looking through the window at the crowded platform. "Well, I don't know what I meant."

"I wish that Quirrel could have lived," he told her solemnly. "But I don't regret what I did."

"No one outruns Death," Luna replied strangely. Harry froze, searching her eyes in the pregnant silence that followed her statement.

Harry dropped the conversation as he sat back. "What house are you hoping for, then?" he asked abruptly, looking at Ginny. She curled her hair around one finger and shrugged.

"My whole family has been in Gryffindor. But I'm not sure I like their colors," she said. Her eyes flicked up to his face and her cheeks pinked slightly before she fidgeted and looked away.

The train jumped beneath their feet as it began its journey North, and Harry laid his head back against the cushioned seat. Ginny excused herself, claiming that she was going to go find a few of her friends, and Harry enjoyed a moment of silence before he sighed and glanced intently at Luna.

"What did you mean when you said that no one escapes Death?"

Luna blinked. "You are wearing His cloak," she answered.

Harry was so surprised by her insight that he floundered for an appropriate response. Luna bobbed her head and gestured at the clasp. "There's a very distinctive mark on the clasp. The mark of the Brothers Three, the Sign of Death."

Harry blinked and craned his head to get a look at the silver clasp. It looked to him like fine silver arranged in the shape of two skeletal hands gripped tightly together, without any sign of a mark. "It's just a regular clasp," he replied slowly.

"Oh, of course it is," Luna said in a low voice. "I'm good at keeping secrets, Harry Potter."

"Well, it _is_ Death's cloak," he admitted reluctantly. "But there's no insignia on the clasp."

Luna cocked her head slightly, jostling her platinum blonde hair and the radishes on her ears. "You just aren't looking at it right."

Harry quirked an eyebrow at her and shook his head. "I'll have to take your word for it, then," he told her. She blinked, as if surprised, and Harry glanced through the window, watching the countryside run by.

"Have you ever met Death?" Luna asked quite suddenly, in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

He glanced at her briefly, met her earnest blue eyes, and nodded his head. "Yes," he answered aloud.

Luna shuddered. "I saw Him," she told him dreamily. "Once. You…remind me quite a lot of Death, Harry Potter."

Harry felt a strange mixture of pity and pride, and impulsively reached out his hand towards her. Luna gasped, leaning away from him briefly, and just as he was about to pull his hand away the girl slapped her hand into his palm, gripping his knuckles painfully.

"That was just the way He did it," Luna whispered, looking at their intertwined hands. "He had this look...and then he reached out…and she was gone. But I'm still here."

Harry said nothing until she released his hand. "I'm sorry."

"Oh," Luna fidgeted in her seat. "It's alright. No one outruns Death, Harry Potter. You should know."

Their eyes met, and Harry's breath caught for a moment as he found in this young girl an understanding that no one had ever shared. He wondered, for a moment, if Luna knew enough about the world to be afraid of the dark.

When she blinked, there was that detached air about her again, and Harry knew immediately that she did know. And she _was_ afraid.


	22. Part 2 Chapter 8

Part 2 Chapter 8

"Good morning, Hermione," Harry greeted, pausing on his way through the open gates of the Hogwarts courtyard. "How was your summer?"

She responded to this with a noncommittal shrug, regarding him somewhat more coolly than he had expected after some months apart. "Why didn't you reply to my letters?"

"I received none," he answered, pausing in his steps. At her skeptical look, he held tapped his staff on the ground as he was wont to do when his thoughts began to turn deeply upon some curious topic, and after several slow breaths he blinked quickly and gave her a delighted grin.

"I assure you I never once laid my eyes upon a letter of yours," he told her. "Someone has been tampering with my mail."

Hermione scoffed. "Who would do such a thing?"

"Who indeed?" he replied, ambling along congenially. There was a path that wound its way down to the lake with a serpent-like suggestion, passing along the outermost edges of the Forbidden Forest, where the trees were few and far between and the grass turned rough and patchy. At this early hour, the air was quite crisp with the distinctive signature of Old Winter, but Harry remained entirely unaffected by the temperature. It was a happy side-effect of Death's cloak; Harry would neither freeze nor burn while it protected him.

Forever he would feel the same cool comfort of Death's embrace.

"Not a single letter?" Hermione asked him again, sounding quite put-out. "I wrote you from France, you know. With pictures!"

"That was kind of you. Do you have relatives there?"

She replied in the negative, and Harry hummed thoughtfully, casting his eyes across the icy lake. The naked trees which crowded the eastern banks provided him with some small measure of privacy from anyone watching the lake from their windows in either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. Both of their towers had a good view of the courtyard and the trail leading to the lake, a fact that likely contributed to the castle's defense as well as its aesthetic.

"Did you learn any magic over the summer?" Hermione asked him. "I hope you remembered to complete your assignments."

"Of course. In fact, I learned more over the summer than during my year at Hogwarts," Harry declared, turning towards her with energy in his eyes. "Ted Tonks is an enchanter and an identifier of arcane devices. He instructed me in runes."

"That's not taught until third year," Hermione mused. "I wonder why?"

"I imagine that it has something to do with politics," Harry posited quietly, but not without some heat. Hermione gave him a baffled look.

"Politics?"

He nodded. "You know that a curse is on the Defense position, and that the Potions professor is entirely unsuited for teaching of any kind. The question remains: why?"

"I don't know if I would go as far as that concerning Professor Snape," Hermione hedged, much to Harry's amusement.

"I see," he drawled, making a great deal of inspecting his fingernails. "So the little fact that the last two generations of Hogwarts graduates have contained the fewest potions apprentices of any school throughout the world means nothing? Or that nobody with a Potions NEWT certified in Britain can find employment in another country without two years of training and recertification by the ICW?"

Having no response, Hermione huffed and crossed her arms.

"It's common knowledge that the curse on Defense was placed in the mid-sixties," Harry continued. "Only a short time later, Voldemort began gathering power. Currently, half the witches and wizards in Britain have graduated with entirely insufficient instruction in Defense. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has fewer recruits today than any other time in the recorded history of the Ministry."

"So what? You think that it was all done purposefully?"

"Yes," Harry replied. He concluded with a derisive snort, "Just look at our professor this year. If he even deserves the title."

"That doesn't explain the lack of elective options," Hermione pointed out. "And Lockhart doesn't seem so bad. Haven't you read about the things he's done?"

"I've read about the things he _claims_ to have done," Harry replied with a small chuckle. "I took one look at him and realized that it was all codswallop."

"What?" Hermione exclaimed. "You're just being ridiculous now."

"No, really," Harry insisted. "He hardly knows which way to point his wand!"

"Oh, shove off."

"Fine," Harry waved her off. "You'll see when he actually attempts to teach you something. As for the electives, all I have to say is this: look at the people on the Board of Governors. They're all purebloods! And one thing _all_ purebloods have in common is access to extensive family libraries of magical texts. They have much more interest in having their children graduate soon after they've reached their majority than spending their gold on teachers and class materials for courses that they could easily study on their own."

Hermione frowned. "What about people who don't have access to libraries?"

"They can hire tutors for the summer," Harry replied promptly. "Or have their parents teach them."

"But muggleborns students wouldn't _know_ to study beyond the scope of their courses at Hogwarts," Hermione argued. "And most of them wouldn't be able to afford private tutors."

Harry nodded with a mischievous smile. "Now you begin to see. And people wonder why it remains difficult for muggleborns to find a job after Hogwarts," he thought aloud. "Beyond simple prejudice, there remains the fact that muggleborns are quite frankly under-qualified for perhaps sixty percent of the professions in Wizarding Britain. This makes them less likely to remain in the magical world after graduation, and easier targets for people like Voldemort who want to see them all killed."

Hermione stared at him, horrified and somewhat reluctant to believe that Harry was actually being sensible. "You're having me on," she decided, shaking her head as if to clear away unwanted thoughts. Harry responded with a languid shrug.

"Look into it yourself," he challenged. "I spent a good deal of time this summer reading about magical history, and I believe that it's _safe_ to conclude—at the very least—a complete lack of consideration for muggleborn students by the Board of Governors and the Headmasters of Hogwarts for at least the last century. But, considering the worthless nature of OWLs and NEWTs internationally and the absolutely trivial contents of most Hogwarts classes, I think that it's _probably_ much more sinister than mere neglect."

Hermione stewed thoughtfully for a long time before she sighed, obviously discarding the whole topic. "I didn't come out here to argue conspiracies," she told him. "If you've learned so much magic over the summer, then at least demonstrate."

"Here to watch, then?" Harry asked her, smiling slightly.

"I'll never figure out how you can manage to cast with that silly staff of yours if I don't watch you using it," Hermione reminded him.

Harry gestured for her to step back, transformed his staff, and fell easily into his most comfortable stance. He generally tried to combine his spellcasting practice with the motions of his most common spear techniques, and he usually began by angling his spear slightly above the horizontal, thrusting forward and stepping with his lame leg in time with a whispered piercing curse.

He shuffled his feet, bent his knees, and winced at the sharp twinge that pulled along his thigh. He began moving through elementary footwork and casting a litany of basic combative magic. The air began to snap and hum as shields slammed into place before him, dropping in time with the dancing lights which soared from the twisted prongs of his spear. The magic grew more complex by degrees, until the shields that crack into existence were thick, shimmering domes of light and his offensive curses blasted great swaths of ice from the surface of the lake, throwing snow forty meters into the air.

Harry reached his peak and brought himself down slowly, raising a pulsing shield above the lake and holding it until his arms were shaking. When this one fell, it split the air with a loud _thoom,_ and Hermione visibly flinched away from the lake with the front of cool air that accompanied the sound. Harry straightened from his half-crouch, brought his spear up, and tapped the ground with its bronze butt-spike, breathing deeply through his teeth.

The air slithered and heaved as magic evacuated suddenly from it, leaving the atmosphere around him feeling exhausted and warm.

Hermione blinked, watching Harry with wide eyes, and he noticed with a small frown that she was shivering. He leaned towards her and touched her arm, casting a silent warming charm. "Have you forgotten that you are a witch?" he teased, to which she responded with a light blush.

"I was suitably distracted," she retorted. "By God, Harry! That was truly incredible."

Harry ducked his head at the high praise. "Well, I don't know about all that," he demurred. "My magic isn't quite as powerful as you might expect, given my demonstration. Madam Pomfrey told me I was below average for my age."

"If you _do_ have less magic than the average wizard, you certainly know how to use what you have to greater effect," Hermione assured him.

Harry snorted, "That's _exactly_ what I like to hear from witches."

"I think I saw a few very advanced spells in there," Hermione glossed over his wry response. "I couldn't really identify most of them, though. You were speaking very quietly."

"I can show you some of the shields, if you'd like," Harry offered.

"Do you know the wand motions?" Hermione asked rhetorically, knowing his answer. Seeing his hesitation, she waved her hand. "I'll look them up myself. Not everyone has the massive will required to force their spells to work regardless of technique."

"What can I say? It's a gift," Harry joked, drawing lines through the snow with his staff. "I'm going to do some meditations. You don't have to stick around; it's probably going to be pretty boring."

Hermione shrugged, watching him as he cleared a patch of ground and dried the grass, kneeling with his eyes cast over the lake. Harry heard her receding footsteps and allowed his mind to wander freely for some time before bring himself to focus and counting the beats of his heart. Death had not seen fit to instruct him too thoroughly in the mind arts, since his cloak protected him from mental intrusions already, but Harry had still practiced the fundamentals of occlumency. Namely, organizing his mind with the assistance of his magic.

The human mind is a strange thing. Very much unlike a digital computer, memories are not stored in an easily accessible fashion, sometimes scattered throughout the mind in many different places. Because the human brain has so many concurrent functions, its inner workings resemble spaghetti, with relationships stretching haphazardly across its entirety. As a whole, it is a wondrous thing, capable of feats far beyond mere computations, but in part, it can be somewhat underwhelming.

Magic, applied rightly, takes the chaos of the human mind and attempts to organize it. Techniques like legilimancy take advantage of that chaos to glean information from the thoughts of the unsuspecting, which is why occlumency is the natural counter. Harry found that there were many benefits to these sorts of meditations, however. The incredible volume of knowledge that he had consumed over the past year would have been too great for him to properly apply without the aid of magic.

As things stood, he had succeeded in constructing and organizing a library of sorts in his mind. Like the mind palace of Sherlock Holmes, it allowed him to recall those things that he most needed to remember, given a chance to sit down and think.

Harry's meditation was interrupted by a blood-curdling scream, and for a moment he merely opened his eyes, frozen where he knelt in the grass. Then he recognized the sound as Hermione's voice, and swiftly regained his feet. Moving as swiftly as his old injury would allow, Harry palmed his shield, armed his spear, and sought out the source of the disturbance.

He found Hermione standing perfectly still under a tree halfway to the gates of Hogwarts. Harry hesitated, trying to determine the source of her terror, when he saw movement in the snow at her feet. Several long, black snakes slithered around her, hissing softly, and Harry saw now that another had curled around her waist and neck. Its head was swaying before her face, fangs bared and dripping malignantly.

Harry called out immediately, in the sibilant tongue of snakes. _"Hold!"_

The dark reptile reared back, snapping its mouth shut. Its tongue flicked out of its mouth as two yellow eyes peered around Hermione's bushy hair to find the source of the voice.

Three other heads had risen from the snow, and they, too, were staring at Harry.

" _A speaker!"_ One of the snakes exclaimed. _"Are you the one who summoned us, Speaker? Shall we bite this tasty morsel?"_

" _Stay away from the woman,"_ Harry commanded. At once, the snake that had been constricting Hermione's arms dropped to the ground as if she had burned it. She gasped, trembling violently, and Harry held out his hand. _"Come to me."_

" _Of course,"_ the snakes chorused, moving swiftly towards his arm. Hermione spun about with her wand raised, only to stare wide-eyed as Harry lifted the snakes from the cold snow. One of them draped over his shoulders, another curled about his arm, a third about his waist, and the last began to twine around his staff.

"Harry?" she whispered.

"It's alright," he assured her. "They won't hurt you. Not while I am here."

Her fingers trembled, and her wand was stuffed violently into her pocket. She opened her mouth as if to speak, ran her eyes over the snakes that hung from his body, hissing contentedly, and bolted towards the school.

" _You frightened her away, master,"_ one of the snakes informed him unnecessarily.

" _Thanks,"_ Harry replied sarcastically. _"I couldn't tell that for myself."_

" _You're welcome,"_ the snake replied smugly. It twisted around his neck and put its head in his hair. _"You smell nice."_

Turning towards the forest, Harry trudged through the snow and released the snakes into the forest before walking back to Hogwarts. When he reached the courtyard he stopped, pointedly casting his eyes towards the tall hedge beside the colonnade, where he knew four Slytherin students were lurking.

"You'll have to do better than that, I'm afraid," he informed them simply. "A snake is no danger to me."

He ambled along shortly thereafter, towards the Great Hall and breakfast.

* * *

"I think that it is time for you to learn the basics of wandless magic," El intoned when Harry recovered from his latest defeat at the hands of his mentor. The god's spear and shield disappeared, and his armor was exchanged for a simple white robe. He offered his hand to his fallen protégé, and Harry allowed himself to be drawn to his feet.

His dream-self retained the disability of his physical form. El had chided him briefly for attempting to make himself stronger by sheer force of will, reminding him that he was training in his dreams to build muscle memories that would otherwise take years for him to learn in the waking world. If he became accustomed to moving in a body that was not his own, what use would those skills be to him when he was awake?

Harry was at a severe disadvantage in any contest between them, not only because of El's unfathomable depth of experience but also because the god was taller than him, stronger than, him, and faster than him. Repeatedly, Harry had been told that it was better for him to grow accustomed to fighting against opponents more powerful than himself. In a real fight, his only advantage would be the vast array of long-forgotten magic that he had available to him.

That and these long hours of practice.

Having recovered entirely from being run through the chest by a spear, Harry clasped his hands behind his back and waited for El to begin. "A magical focus channels your energy, and indelible traces of the spells that you cast remain within it. The focus ameliorates the greatest difficulty of magic: control. By familiarizing your wand with practiced spells, it will more easily respond to you in the future, allowing you to shape your magic into those already familiar forms. Without a wand, however, this aspect of spellcasting must be done every time you cast a spell."

"That sounds difficult," Harry replied.

El raised his eyebrow. "Not any more than the other things that you have learned. In fact, you already know the first steps."

Holding out his hands, El beckoned Harry to put his palms down upon them, and they stood for a moment with their hands resting against each other. "I want you to push your magic into your hands."

When Harry had learned the basics of healing trances and self-healing, he had been forced to master the concept of shifting magic throughout his own body. The magical core wasn't a physical organ, and so it didn't correspond directly to any part of a wizard's body. However, most people assume that the magical core is near the heart, so when they use magic the energy manifests there before it is utilized in their spells.

The trick was to pull magic into the body at a specific point and allow it to pool rather than channeling it into a spell. Magic can never exist without a cause, and it will cause a variety of effects when it is held in place. The area is numbed, rendered impervious to physical trauma, and the body's natural functions are somewhat enhanced.

The dangerous side of things is what professionals call 'accidental discharge.' Controlling magic that is harnessed and stored becomes exponentially more difficult with the amount of magic being held. Losing control meant nasty shocks and burns.

Harry easily completed the task, and El felt the power of Harry's magic in the boy's hands. They didn't appear visibly different, but of course magic isn't a tangible thing unless it a wizard exerts his will upon the world.

"There," El said, dropping his hands. "The magic in your hands can be used to cast spells. Because there is no focus, you may find that your directed spells are inaccurate. Your fine control will likewise suffer, and no amount of practice will allow you to match the effects of a staff or a wand. But you can become good enough that the difference is negligible."

"What kind of spell do you recommend?"

"Not a spell, truly. Practice creating flames and directing them, summoning objects and banishing them. You could also try engraving stones with nothing but your fingers," El gave him a few examples. At Harry's questioning look, he smiled. "There are no spells without foci. Magic can only be what you make of it. _You_ are your own limits."

Harry narrowed his eyes unconsciously, staring at the backs of his hands, but then he closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose, and visualized what he wanted to happen. Turning his hand over, he curled his fingers, breathed out, and felt at the throbbing energy that he held in his palm.

The moment he began to channel, magic blasted from his right hand and surged through his body from his left, resulting in a very visible arc of lightning that snapped over his shoulders and culminated in a _whoosh_ of white flame. Harry yelped, breaking his concentration, and the jet cut off as suddenly as it appeared, leaving him with extensive burns along his palm and wrist.

With a sigh, he reflected that it was a good thing he was dreaming before buckling down to try it once more.

* * *

Draco Malfoy had a problem.

Turning the inconspicuous hardcover over in his hands, he cast his eyes about the nearly deserted library once again, feeling his heart as it raced away in his chest, high on adrenaline in spite of the absolute silence. He was about to complete the task that he had been given, and he knew from the way his Father had spoken that the results of failure would be…spectacularly horrible. He didn't dare to open the book, didn't dare to mention so much as a peep of that conversation to his mother. He spent the whole train ride with his hand gripping the pendant which was obscured neatly beneath his robes, wondering where he was going to put the book.

Where else but the library? That had been his initial inclination. But now, sitting here, he realized that it would only look that much more suspicious, sitting out on a table when the students were trying their best to avoid the library for as long as their classes would allow. And Madam Pince was such a stickler for neatness that she was sure to notice it and try to find its place, which would only raise questions of whose book it was and why it was in the library…

No, it wasn't good enough. Rising swiftly to his feet, Draco swept out of the library, wringing his hands reflexively before stuffing them into his pockets and pasting a scowl on his face. At least it would get people to leave him alone.

He thought of the Great Hall, but that was a terrible idea. Just thinking it caused him to cringe. With Dumbledore and Severus sitting on the dais, it would be impossible for him to place the book without being spotted with it, and he had no guarantee that anyone would actually _take_ it, since people didn't generally clean their own places in the Great Hall. If the elves got a hold of it, there was no knowing how long it might take for a student to stumble over it as his father had intended. Draco shook his head, turning a corner with a snap of his heel.

He could just take out the middle man, as it were. Sneak the book directly into the bag of some unsuspecting fellow. A girl probably, since boys were frankly less likely to give a damn about the book even if they did find it. But if he did that then the question became: who?

Draco knew that the book was dangerous somehow, hence his father's warning. Was there anyone that he was willing to condemn? Not knowing what the book was actually supposed to _do_ made the decision that much more difficult, since Draco knew just enough about his family's magic not to be fooled by the book's innocuous appearance.

It was bloody _evil._ He could feel it on his skin when he touched its cover. For some reason, he continued to catch himself running his finger along its spine, and each time his sense of foreboding grew more severe.

He was almost desperate to rid himself of the damn thing by this point.

And so it came to this. He would leave the book in a common room, but he couldn't rely on sneaking into any one of the other Hogwarts Houses, and although he was loth to unleash whatever evil was contained within the pages of the old book upon his own peers, Draco couldn't stand to retain the book for a single moment longer than necessary.

It would have to be late, perhaps even past curfew. Slytherin students were notoriously paranoid, and it would be impossible for him to do anything in the common room without being spotted by someone, so long as it was occupied.

That night, Draco waited until he was absolutely certain that the other occupants of his dorm were asleep, then stole away, down the stairs. He hesitated, leaning over a table towards the corner of the room with the book in his hands.

Swallowing his dread, he dropped it and quickly retreated, allowing the shadows to swallow him up. He was so fixated on the book that he completely failed to notice the dark specter looming at the threshold.

"Draco," Severus Snape hissed. "What are you doing?"

The boy paled and whipped his head to stare incredulously at the potion's master, opening his mouth to speak only to clamp it firmly shut. "Nothing," he declared, tilting his head up. "Just couldn't sleep."

Snape's eyes lingered on Draco's for a long, tense moment. His eyebrows drew together, and his eyes narrowed, until he finally scoffed and waved his hand. "Be gone."

Relieved, Draco took the stairs two at a time, hesitating only at the very top to wonder if Snape had seen the book…

* * *

"There's trouble at Hogwarts," Luna said when Harry sat down beside her at the Library. Some days had passed since the start of term, and so far he was completely unimpressed with his courses. Especially Defense.

He remained entirely occupied by his independent studies, but in his free time he often allowed his thoughts to linger on the singular problem of Dobby the house elf and his cryptic warnings. Now, to hear the same ill omen from this little blonde enigma…

"Why do you say that?" he asked her quietly.

"There has been an outbreak of wrackspurts in Ravenclaw, I'm afraid," she replied airily. "And wickedness festers at the heart of Slytherin. Why, I saw it just this morning..."

"Saw what?"

"Wickedness, silly," she told him, as if it were obvious. Harry nodded slowly.

"And pray tell what a wrackspurt is, dear Luna," he inquired lightly. The girl frowned.

"Surely you've heard of them? Nasty things. They hang around your ears and whisper the worst kinds of ideas. They cause all kinds of trouble," she informed him matter-of-factly.

Harry subsided briefly into silence. "In Ravenclaw you say?" he asked.

"You believe me?"

In that moment, she looked entirely like the young girl that she ought to be, peering shyly at him from behind a curtain of her hair with large blue eyes. Harry leaned close and touched her hand lightly. "I've heard tell of creeping things which whisper temptations into the ears of the unwary," he told her seriously. "What reason have I to doubt you?"

She leaned over her parchment and began to scribble studiously. Harry removed a book and enjoyed companionable silence for a short time before she suddenly sat up and gazed at him piercingly. "What do you call them?"

"In general, I name them demons," he answered in a whisper, thinking of the story that El had told him. "They have no true form. If you dub them wrackspurts, then wrackspurts they will be."

"It's a shame, the things that they do," Luna replied dreamily. "Just last night they took my shoes and socks."

At this, Harry closed his book with a snap. " _People_ are responsible for their own decisions, wrackspurts notwithstanding," he declared firmly. Luna leaned away from this sudden intensity for a moment, blowing a stray lock of hair from her face. "And you should count yourself lucky that it was only clothing that they took, if what you say about wrackspurts is true."

"What should I do? I don't think I'll _ever_ find those socks."

Harry released his breath in a long _whoosh_ and sat back, looking into her wide blue eyes bemusedly. "Talk to your head of house," he advised her. "I'm sorry I startled you. I just…tend not to abide by the weaknesses of my fellows when it comes to demons and their lies."

Luna patted his knee reassuringly. "It's okay. I'll tell the little professor about the wrackspurt issue. I'm sure these are not as serious as the wrackspurts you've encountered before."

"Just tell him about the socks," Harry corrected, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Not everyone will care for this talk of wrackspurts, you see."

"Won't they?" she replied, gathering her supplies. She stood up and skipped out of the library under Harry's thoughtful gaze.


	23. Part 2 Chapter 9

A/N: If you're interested, check the end of chapter.

Part 2 Chapter 9

Harry heard them before he saw them, and he hesitated mid-step when their voices reached him around the corner of the echoing corridor. He continued his uneven gait shortly thereafter, rounding the corner and spotting two redheaded siblings engaged in what appeared to be an earnest conversation.

It was Ginny Weasley and her brother, Ron. Harry recognized the boy first, only because of his unmistakable face, and the name of the girl escaped him briefly, but he put it together quickly enough when he heard her voice. "Why won't you talk to me?" she was asking. Pleading, rather. "It's terrible there, Ron. I wish the hat wouldn't have done it."

"No one in our family has ever been sorted to Slytherin before," Ron replied, as if that answered her question. "You know how those snakes are."

" _I'm_ not like them," Ginny retorted.

Ron eyed her skeptically. "You're wearing the colors, eh?"

Harry interrupted them by virtue of his presence, and the moment Ron's eyes laid upon him they were filled with such a sudden heat that Harry could hardly stop the question from falling from his tongue. "Is something the matter?"

"If there is, it isn't any of _your_ business," Ron scoffed dismissively. Harry allowed his eyes to slide from the boy down to the girl, who was trying valiantly to avoid his eyes.

"I admit that I was unaware of your sorting," Harry told her. "I remember you told me on the train about Gryffindor."

She nodded.

"The train?"

Harry leaned on his staff, turning his head to the side just slightly as he tried to determine just what, exactly had happened to this Weasley boy for him to hate Slytherin so vehemently. "Yes, Luna Lovegood sat with us, as I recall."

"Why were you sitting with my sister on the train?"

"It would be more accurate to say that she sat with me," Harry corrected lightly. "Well, if it is all the same to you, I'd like to extend my welcome to you, Ginny, and a good-day to you, Ron."

Tapping the ground softly, he made as if to continue walking. Ron, however, stopped him with a hand on his arm, which immediately caused Harry to clench his fist tightly around his staff. "Unhand me immediately."

Meeting Harry's emerald eyes was enough to convince Ron to hold up his hands in surrender. His mouth didn't seem to get the same memo as his fingers. "What were you doing out this morning? There's been an incident."

"What kind of incident?"

Ginny, surprisingly, answered. "All the roosters have been killed. Hagrid was quite distraught."

"I was out by the lake, as always." Harry answered Ron's initial question, but his eyes were fixed on Ginny. She was shuffling her feet and holding one hand protectively over the satchel that hung from her shoulder.

Ron's eyes were narrow and suspicious. Harry met them defiantly, and at once the ginger boy looked towards his sister, suddenly less confident. "You didn't see anything?"

"Does it matter to you? I don't see why you'd be bothered by a bunch of dead cocks, anyway."

"Forget it, then."

An awkward, tense silence fell across the trio, and Harry broke it by tapping the floor once again. Without another word, he left them there, pondering the mystery of the slaughtered roosters.

It was sheer dumb luck that led him to the corridor just outside the library, between the hours of ten and eleven o'clock. The corridor made a ninety-degree turn into a mostly deserted terminus containing a second staircase down and supply closet. There was an angelic statue in an alcove at the end of the corridor, with her wings spread wide and a sword held between her hands. Harry encountered the scene of the crime while walking from the library towards the staircase.

It was a seldom used hall, mostly because the main staircase was much faster than taking this secondary shaft down and then following the corridor of classrooms across to the keep. Harry enjoyed the detour, however, and it just so happened that this was where the body was laid.

There was a good deal of blood splattered across the ground and upon the walls. Harry had the impression of a man throwing a bucket of paint against the wall when he saw it and stopped in his tracks, leaning on his staff and adjusting the strap of his bag.

The cat laid perfectly motionless in the arms of the statue, whose sword was shattered and strewn throughout the pools of blood. And above the statue, words were scrawled in crude letters, brought into stark relief by the crimson sheen of the blood-ink.

"Murderer!" the sudden cry so startled Harry that he stumbled in his effort to turn towards its source. It was just as well that he had, since it meant that the first swing missed his nose by a hair's breadth.

Reacting immediately to the violence, Harry retaliated with his left hand and scored a blow against Filch's throat. The custodian's cry choked off just as Harry's reflexive follow-up—a blow with his staff against the inside of the advancing man's knee—struck true. The enchanted wood made a solid _thunk_ against bone, and with a strangled cry of pain the older man fell to his knees.

The sound of rapid footsteps forewarned the approach of others, and Harry contemplated making a run for the staircase, but it would have looked even worse for him to be seen fleeing the scene. He settled in, watching Filch struggle to recover his breath, and saw as students arrived with varying degrees of shock and terror on their faces.

Of course, they immediately began to whisper, and when Filch managed to start accusing him of murder again their tentative voices became an uproar. Harry Potter faced them stoically, unmoved.

It was upon this scene that Dumbledore arrived. Between the crowd of shouting students, the spectacle of Argus Filch scrabbling about on all fours, and Harry's blasé demeanor, Albus really had no idea what to think when he arrived, but his first act was to silence the noise with a percussive blast from his wand.

Helping the old custodian to his feet, Dumbledore turned his grandfatherly smile upon the man. "What's all this, then?"

"The boy murdered Mrs. Norris and assaulted me!" Filch declared in a rough voice.

The crowd of students by this time had grown, and Dumbledore caught sight of Hermione Granger at the forefront, having shouldered her way past her peers. She trembled like a leaf in the wind, pale and wide-eyed with acute terror. But she wasn't looking at the blood or at the defaced statue.

She stared directly at her friend, Harry Potter.

"Now, my boy, what have you to say?" the headmaster asked, turning to the raven-haired student. Harry's green eyes flashed briefly, and he straightened as the voices of his peers quieted.

"I discovered this scene exactly as you see it. In his grief, Mr. Filch assumed that I was a likely suspect, and made an attempt to strike me. I reacted without thinking," he answered clearly.

Dumbledore could read nothing from the boy's mind, but the account matched what he had seen from Filch's memories of the encounter. Harry had simply been standing in the corridor when Filch arrived, and the blood was already beginning to dry, which indicated that the crime had taken place some time ago.

"I see," he replied, turning back to Argus. "It is forbidden for you to raise your hand against a student, Argus."

The custodian spluttered incoherently, shaking his fist wildly and whipping his long, shaggy hair about like a whip, and Dumbledore was eventually forced to soothe him with a subtle charm. "You're going to let him go?!" the man exclaimed after he had recovered enough of his faculties to speak. "I've caught him red-handed."

"Now, see here," Dumbledore soothed. "The blood is beginning to dry. This scene was set some hours ago, and you only just found Harry here, likely on his way down from the library."

It was precisely then that Professor Lockhart arrived, striding through the crowd with the pride of a peacock. He took one look at the scene and swooned dramatically, throwing his hand up in apparent distress. Then, he rushed forward, past Harry and Dumbledore, until he was just before the statue, below the dramatic script.

"Enemies of the Heir beware!" he exclaimed, holding his arms wide as he turned back, towards the crowd. "The Chamber is opened!"

Harry snorted derisively. In response to this, but the students in the crowd took up this cry and made quite the racket wailing and carrying on in their grief. They remained entirely ignorant as to the meaning of the words, but just the fact that they were written was enough to rile them.

Turning his inspection upon the cat herself, Professor Lockhart began to _tsk_ and hum. "Yes, a curse is what did it. A terrible curse!"

Dumbledore, evidently having had enough of the man's antics, circumnavigated a splash of blood and picked the stiff cat from the statue's arms. "Petrification," he declared, contrary to Lockhart's pronouncement.

"She is most surely dead!"

"A temporary condition," Dumbledore continued, ignoring Lockhart entirely. Filch was glancing between the two men with a torturous mix of hope and despair upon his features. Dumbledore approached him and offered the stiffened body of Mrs. Norris. "Come now, Argus. Let us take her down to Madam Pomfrey."

They departed then, leaving the hysterical students and Professor Lockhart with the grisly scene. Harry glanced once more upon it, scowled darkly, and slipped away down the stairs.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore closed a dusty old tome and leaned back in his chair, looking first to the perch where Fawkes was resting and then to the faded cover of this, the oldest remaining record of the construction of Hogwarts castle. His left hand snaked across his desk for a lemon drop while his right hand stroked his beard, pausing every now and then while his thoughts churned restlessly.

He had been a transfiguration professor the last time that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, but it didn't make any sense. A girl had died in the late forties, ostensibly related to the chamber, but now a cat had been petrified.

The extremely dramatic scene led Dumbledore to believe that this was a plot designed to demoralize a certain group of people, but who?

"Enemies of the heir…" Dumbledore muttered.

There were moths buzzing beside the window, flying haphazardly against the stone, but there was one small insect in particular that wasn't deterred by the repellent ward on the window sill. Dumbledore watched it idly as the small black beetle flew in a corkscrew trajectory towards the torch beside the door. Fawkes squawked softly and ruffled his wings.

Dumbledore was distracted from his thoughts by the soft ringing of a bell. An absent thought directed the gargoyle outside of his office to step aside, and Albus mentally prepared himself to offer an explanation of today's events to his Deputy Headmistress. He was surprised when he saw the young Hermione granger step tentatively into his office rather than the austere Minerva McGonagall.

"Sorry to bother you, Headmaster," she began, "but I have something I wanted to tell you. It's about the Heir of Slytherin."

"Please, sit down. Lemon drop?"

Hermione shook her head as she perched on the edge of the chair, looking ready to stand up and run at the slightest provocation. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, and Dumbledore noticed that she seemed particularly shaken. She looked much the same now as she had in the corridor several hours ago, and he sat up straighter in concern.

"I think…well, I think that Harry might be the Heir of Slytherin," the girl blurted. Dumbledore blinked as his thoughts ground quite suddenly to a halt.

Whatever it was that he had expected to hear from her, _that_ had not been it. "Oh?"

"I know it seems silly," Hermione continued hurriedly, "but I was walking with him by the lake. He practices his spells there sometimes, you know, and I left him by the lake after he showed me some of the magic he had learned over the summer…"

"What kind of magic was that?" Dumbledore interrupted her gently.

Hermione worried her lip. "Shields and curses, sir. He knew a great deal of different spells."

Dumbledore nodded slowly. "Go on."

"On the way back to the gate, I walked under a tree which must have had snakes in its branches. They dropped down all around me, sir. Long, black snakes with yellow eyes. I must have screamed when they fell because I heard Harry running towards me from the lake. I thought I was going to be bitten," Hermione's voice trembled there, and she paused to collect herself. "Harry spoke to the snakes. They obeyed his command. He collected them in his arms and took them into the forest."

"When you say that he spoke to the snakes, do you mean that he commanded them in English?" Dumbledore asked sharply.

Hermione shook her head. "It was parseltongue, sir. I've read about Slytherin in _Hogwarts, A History._ He passed the ability to speak parseltongue to his heir, and it continued throughout the bloodline as a part of Slytherin's familial magic. If Harry is a parselmouth…"

"Who knows about this talent of Harry's?" Dumbledore asked quietly, although not without a hint of urgency. Hermione, looking into the usually cheerful face of her Headmaster, quailed at the sight of his almost feverish concern.

"No one," she whispered.

Thank you for telling me this," Dumbledore told her sincerely, standing and running his hands over his robes. "Do not mention the fact to anyone else, please."

Hermione stood as well, but paused with her dark eyes filled with doubt. "What will you do?"

Sensing her conflict, Dumbledore smiled, forcing some of his congeniality to return. "Nothing drastic, I assure you. There remains no proof that it was he who harmed Filch's cat, after all."

Once Hermione was gone, Dumbledore approached Fawkes and hung his head so that his chin sank against his breast. "I dreaded this day, Fawkes," he whispered. "I hoped…well, it doesn't matter now, does it? The boy is lost…"

The phoenix spread its wings and trilled brightly, drawing Dumbledore from his dark musings. Fawkes' burning eyes glared into Dumbledore's mask of sorrow, and for a moment Dumbledore wondered if his familiar knew something that he did not. Then he turned away, resting a hand on the Hallow at his hip.

He would speak to Severus first. It would be too dangerous to rush into a confrontation with Riddle's soul without due preparation.

* * *

The Daily Prophet's offices were based in Diagon Alley, just across the street from Gringotts, and it wasn't uncommon for wealthy shareholders of the company to stop by when they visited Gringotts on business. Lucius Malfoy was an uncommon visitor, which belied his rather large stake in the paper, and today there were very few employees of the company that didn't spare him a curious glance as they passed him by on their way into work. The lobby contained enough chairs that he might have chosen to sit, but he remained upon his feet, one hand on the silver knob of his scepter and the other hanging idly at his side.

No one was surprised when Rita Skeeter approached him, and if any raised their eyebrows at the sight of the pair ducking into an unused conference room on the second floor, they did so secretly.

A man as influential as Lucius Malfoy had as much influence over the reporters of the prophet as the chief editor, although he seldom chose to throw his weight around in any obvious manner. Something must have caught his attention.

"You don't know how _glad_ I am to see you here, Lucius," the woman told him once they had taken their seats. "Putting me on this trail…I can't thank you enough."

The use of his first name would have irked him normally, but Lord Malfoy let it slide with a congenial smile. The woman was repulsive, but it was in his best interests for her to continue to enjoy his presence as well as his money, and he knew just when to quirk his lips or bark a laugh just to make her feel like their relationship was closer than simple business. "You _have_ found something, then?"

"More than _something,_ " Skeeter replied. "If we play this right, we could get this onto the front page for weeks!"

"Get on with it, then," Lucius ordered lightly. Skeeter flashed her teeth and leaned forward.

"I saw Harry Potter duck into Knockturn Alley over the summer, so naturally I chose to follow him. He bought no less than thirteen books on the Dark Arts at _Adriane's,"_ Skeeter began. Seeing the predatory expression on her associate's face, she held up a finger. " _And_ I heard about some funky business at Hogwarts while I was keeping my ear to the ground. Turns out…Potter is a parselmouth."

All semblance of excitement fled at once. "What?"

"That was my reaction," Skeeter agreed, mistaking his reaction for surprise. "If I hadn't been a beetle at the time, I might have given myself away."

Lucius fell back in his chair, clenching his fist around the silver head of his scepter and deliberately counting his breaths. "Are you absolutely certain?"

"Yes," Skeeter replied. "I wanted to get your approval before I wrote all this up. You told me that you wanted to see what could be done about the boy's reputation, and I agree that it could be very profitable for the Prophet. People love this stuff. I never expected it to be this _easy_."

"Go right ahead," Lucius told her simply as he stood. "In fact, I want you to drag his name through the mud for as long as you can, and I'm willing to pay money to see it happen."

The woman's eyes brightened considerably upon the mention of compensation, and she, too, rose to her feet. "How much?"

"I'll pay five hundred galleons for each front-page story about how naughty our Boy-Who-Lived really is," Lucius promised her with an easy smile. "Don't disappoint me, Ms. Skeeter. If you'll have my recommendation, you could use his somewhat spotty disciplinary record to justify your more outlandish claims."

"I think I'll do just that. And I know precisely where to start."

* * *

 _Boy-Who-Lived and Parseltongue_

 _A Hogwarts Nightmare_

 _After the suspicious death of Defense Professor and well-respected Mage Hunter Quirinus Quirrel earlier this year, it was hard to believe the rumors of another outlandish occurrence. The beginning of the academic year has so far been marked by such curious happenings as the slaughter of every rooster on school grounds and the petrification of the caretaker's pet cat Mrs. Norris._

 _The cat was discovered at the end of a blood-spattered corridor within the school, held in the arms of a defaced statue. Eye-witness accounts of the scene describe it as a haunting experience, especially considering the grim portent which had been scrawled upon the walls of the corridor._

" _Enemies of the Heir beware,_

 _The Chamber of secrets is opened."_

 _At first glance, the petrification of a cat might seem to be a joke made in poor taste, but the addition of these words written in blood make it clear that the culprit intended the scene to be as horrible as it is cruel._

 _Who could be responsible? The Hogwarts staff continues to investigate the events surrounding the petrification of Mrs. Norris, and have refused to comment on their progress, but the students seem already convinced that the "artist" responsible for the macabre scene is none other than Harry Potter, the boy who was at the center of the controversy surrounding Professor Quirinus Quirrel's untimely demise._

 _He was seen standing in the corridor where the message was written, and exchanged blows with the Hogwarts caretaker before Albus Dumbledore arrived on the scene. His presence at the scene of the crime was evidence enough for some of his peers, but the investigation drags on nevertheless, searching for something more tangible. Or perhaps delaying the inevitable._

 _What evidence are they looking for, exactly? Recently it has come to light that Harry Potter is a parselmouth, a wizard capable of speaking to and controlling serpents. The only wizards who displayed similar capabilities were all descendants of Salazar Slytherin, including He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named._

 _In spite of this, Dumbledore continues to insist that evidence must exist tying Harry to the petrification before any action can be taken. It sounds a lot like the same kind of rhetorical acrobatics that he conducted before the Wizengamot regarding the case of Quirinus Quirrel._

 _The reporters at the Daily Prophet will continue to pay close attention to the events beginning to unfold at Hogwarts._

Harry slapped his copy of the daily prophet against the table and watched with a derisive curl of his lip as it burst into flames. The photo that they had chosen to use for him must have been taken while he was walking through Diagon Alley, since he cut an imposing figure with his drawn hood and long staff. The slant of his head and the telltale glint of his bright, curse-green eyes would do nothing to dispel these rumors.

He stood up, ignoring the choked silence that had fallen over the Great Hall the moment the table in front of him seemingly burst into flames. His eyes sliced across the Gryffindor table and fell heavily on Hermione, who flinched away from his eyes as if they burned her skin. Harry's cloak snapped dramatically as he stormed from the Hall, but he didn't make it very far before he stopped and cursed quietly under his breath.

His hot reaction would do nothing to ameliorate the situation. Dumbledore would be forced to focus his investigation onto Harry, which distracted him from the real culprit, whoever that might be, and that said nothing for the fact that Harry had suddenly become a rather controversial figure.

He almost laughed at how easily the Prophet could control them. Sure, there would be groups of people who would disagree with the article, but Harry knew that they had plenty of things that they could use to demonize him.

There was his use of a staff, his knowledge of ancient magic, his prodigious skills with combative curses, his little visit to Knockturn, his violent history…

And if they were willing to stoop low enough, they could probably make a convincing argument about his gaunt appearance. He could imagine them arguing about how the effects of Dark Magic were clearly visible upon his person, and how his encounter with the Killing Curse had tainted him somehow. All nonsense, but it would be enough.

"Harry?" Luna's voice brought him about, and he narrowed his eyes at her as she approached him, looking just the same as always.

"What?"

She stopped just an arm's length away from him, folding her pale hands in front of her and turning her eyes to a place just to the right of his head. "I know you didn't petrify Mrs. Norris."

"Yeah?" Harry asked her roughly. "And what about the rest of it?"

"You're certainly dark enough for me, Harry. But never Dark," Luna told him, and somehow Harry could tell the difference between the identical terms. His gruff demeanor melted away at once, and a sigh slipped from him before he could stop it.

"They don't understand you," Luna told him, reaching up to touch his arm. "You frighten them, but they can't figure out why. Fear justifies itself eventually, and so they fabricate a reason to be frightened. They'll believe anything."

"Obviously," Harry agreed, leaning on his staff. "Maybe I _should_ go Dark, just to prove them right."

Luna tossed her hair over her shoulder and glared at him. "Allowing other people to dictate your character to you would not absolve you of guilt. Isn't that what you said to me the other day?"

Harry searched her eyes for a long time, and eventually cracked a weak smile. "You're alright, Luna," he muttered, beginning to walk again. "That sounded just like something Death would have said."

"What did you say?" Luna asked, coming up alongside him. Harry shook his head.

"They'll hate you, too," he warned her in lieu of answering her question. "Just for talking to me."

"They'll hate me anyway," Luna replied in a whisper.

They walked in silence until they reached the gate, and that was where Harry stopped, looking out over the snowy hills of the school grounds. "This could end badly, you know," he uttered a final word of caution.

"Yes," Luna agreed, looking entirely unperturbed.

Nodding at the expected reply, Harry patted his friend on the shoulder and followed the winding path down to the lake.

"What should I do?" Harry whispered.

"Stay true to yourself," El advised him. "Do not be shaken. Exercise your self-control and show them who you really are."

Shaking his head, the raven-haired boy gave a mirthless laugh. "That won't change their minds."

"No, it won't. The people of your country have spent so long fighting that they now refuse to stand up for anything at all. So they fall for everything."

" _My_ country?" Harry asked rhetorically, shaking his head. "They don't act like my countrymen."

In silence, his eyes shot across the ice as his thoughts peered uselessly into the future. A thousand possibilities revealed themselves, only to turn tantalizing before him, each just beyond his ability to grasp. There were too many missing variables, too many unknowns.

"In time, they will learn. _You_ are responsible for yourself," El told him sharply. "I have taught you the ways of warriors, instructed you in the makings of manhood, and now I have commissioned you as my judge, to act in my own place in this world. Your mind is the last thing."

"Do you mean that I should be improving my mind?"

"Your will is like iron; exercise it! Trust your instincts, sharpen your intellect, fortify your barriers, and when you have done all this you will be ready." Harry had glanced sharply at his master when he had begun to speak, sensing the terrible urgency in his voice, but he just couldn't grasp the enormity of the god's words.

"Ready for what?"

El's figure transformed at once into the specter of Death, and his pale lips drew into a forbidding smile. Then he was gone.

A/N: I don't usually make a point to include notes at the beginning or end of my chapters, but I had a review recently that piqued my interest, so I thought I'd include a reply here. I usually respond by PM, but the question implied in the review is one that I'm sure others might find interesting, so here goes:

Question (paraphrased): Isn't it odd to include references to Christianity or Biblical themes in a story mostly about witches, wizards, and magic?

Answer: I understand where the question is coming from, considering historical inquisitions and witch-hunts that we so-often hear about in stories like _The Crucible_ or jokes about the Spanish Inquisition. Common knowledge would have you believe that Christianity is opposed to magic, and I know Christian parents who don't like their children to be exposed to stories about magic.

 **But** I don't think that Christianity implies a lack of belief in magic or, even, a hatred for magic. In fact, I would say that the Bible is one of the most widely read books about magic in the whole world, and a lot of the magic in Harry Potter, especially, seems related to Biblical ideas. So, here are some examples of Biblical magic in Harry Potter.

Transfigurations:

inanimate to animate – Moses turns staff to snake (Exodus 7:10)

inanimate to inanimate – water to wine (John 2: 1-11)

animate to inanimate – Woman to pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26)

animate to animate – Nebuchanezzar to animal (Daniel 4:33)

Elijah calls fire down from the sky to smite his enemies (incedio, fiendfyre, other fire spells). (2 Kings 1:10)

Skeletal corpses are raised to life and used as an army (Inferi). (Ezekiel 37: 1-14)

Men speaking to animals – Eve to snake, Balaam to donkey (Genesis, Numbers 22:28)

Conjuration – Feeding the 5000, endless oil (Matthew 14:13-21, 2 Kings 4)

Resurrection (1 Kings 17:17-24, 2 Kings 4:35, Kings 13:21, Luke 7:13-15, Matthew 9:25, John 11:43-44, Matthew 28:5-7, Matthew 28:5-7, Acts 9:36-42, Acts 20: 9-12, Acts 14:19-20, John 5:28-29)

Soul magic – demons being cast out of men (Ephesians 6:10-18, Matthew 12:43-45, Mark 16:16-18, 1 Peter 5:8, Luke 10:17, etc)

There is more magic in the Bible, but I think I've made my point.

Anyway, my point is not to convince you about anything pertaining to the Bible or religion or what have you, but to answer the question. Given the story of the Bible, true or not, it undeniably contains tales of magic, and not only is magic repeatedly discussed, it is performed by Men of God, thereby showing that God is not opposed to magic, and in fact gifts it to his children. This is why, in other Harry Potter fanfictions, you may have seen a character or two mention the infamous "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and call it hypocritical or misunderstood.

The type of witchcraft discussed here is the kind of thing that I am attempting to represent somewhat more dramatically in my own story: consorting with demons, evil spirits, and other enemies of God.

Therefore, not only do I refuse the idea that Christianity and magic are incompatible ideas, I rather profess the idea that they are _inseparable_. I may or may not be doing a good job with my fanfiction here on this site, but I have always thought that Harry Potter was practically begging for someone to write a story that emphasizes the many Biblical themes from the book. I'll do my best.

Finally, I don't want to imply that my story is entirely consistent with Christian values, because it isn't. nor do I want to imply that I can write a God character that accurately represents God because I can't. Nor am I trying to do these things. What I _can_ do is write a story that contemplates some complex themes while also, hopefully, being entertaining enough not to put everyone to sleep. I don't expect everyone to agree with my ideas, obviously, or I wouldn't bother writing them down.

I know, of course, that people may be offended at the idea of Christianity, and that people often avoid talking about it, which I why I never expected my story to receive as many followers as it already has.

I appreciate every single one of you who has read my story and look forward to more feedback. Thank you!


	24. Part 2 Chapter 10

Part 2 Chapter 10

"Harry is possessed," Dumbledore hissed in an urgent undertone, after he had closed the door to Severus' private office and cast a litany of privacy charms upon the door and the walls. The former dark wizard paled dramatically, tightening his grip upon his wand as he cast a stasis charm over the potion which was gently boiling over a blue fire.

"What?"

Dumbledore, trembling like the old man that he truly was, conjured a chair and sank into it, burying his face into trembling hands. "Harry is possessed," he repeated in a low moan, digging his fingers into the skin above his eyebrows.

Severus scoffed. "Impossible. Both of us sifted through his mind and saw nothing," he replied sharply. "Or did the Dark Lord evade both of us, masters of the Mind Arts?"

"It must have happened when he slew Quirrel, _after_ our cursory inspections with legilimancy," Dumbledore answered tiredly. "I thought of that already. You noticed that Harry suddenly became an occlumens shortly before Quirrel made an attempt on the stone, I'm sure. Both of us were aware of the fact that Quirrel was possessed by Tom Riddle's shade. He turns up dead, at Harry's hand. Now, neither of us can so much as glimpse his mind."

"What _evidence_ do you have?" Severus asked. "Spare me your speculations. The boy is as strange as ever. His behavior hasn't changed dramatically, as you would expect if he were fighting against an evil spirit."

"He _speaks parseltongue_ , Severus," Dumbledore replied flatly. The Potions Master closed his jaw with a soft _click_ , turning his wand between his fingers. Seconds ticked by, and his expression grew darker with each moment, until he, too, fell into the chair at his desk.

"How could this have happened? Better yet, how could Riddle have been stupid enough to give himself away?"

"I long suspected that a part of the Dark Lord remained with the poor boy after that dreadful night so long ago," Dumbledore whispered. "That connection likely made him vulnerable to the shade. As you know, such beings cannot usually possess a person against their will. As for the second question…well, perhaps Harry is not as lost as I had thought in my haste. It is possible that he doesn't know himself to be possessed."

"A part of the Dark Lord?" Snape asked, shaking his head. "Not flesh or blood; there was no corpse. You're referring to his soul, then? Only that could have saved the Dark Lord's spirit from the afterlife."

Dumbledore's eyes narrowed upon Severus' face, but the man was entirely unfazed. "What do you know about such things, Severus?"

"You think I am ignorant about such elementary topics as _necromancy_?" Snape replied in a sneer. "All aspiring Dark Wizards turn first to that despicable practice. Its allure is…irresistible. And despite what efforts the Ministry might make, there is no shortage of available texts on the subject. At least for those who know where to look."

"Is it so widely known?" Dumbledore questioned desperately.

"There are many who learn such magic, but few who dare to practice it," Severus answered him promptly. "There is a certain cost to soul magic, especially necromancy…most practitioners of the Dark Arts find it prohibitive. They turn to less…permanent branches of magic. Why are you asking me? Surely, as old as you are, you have learned of these things already."

Dumbledore shook his head. Even after one hundred years, he had never seriously investigated the Dark Arts. It would have proven politically disastrous for him to be caught studying such magic, and since he had been questioned before he had been allowed to swear his oaths of office to the International Confederation of Wizards, it would have been impossible for him to keep any intimate knowledge of the Dark Arts a secret.

It was yet another reason why Severus Snape was so important. He could learn things that Dumbledore could not afford to know, and do things that Dumbledore could not afford to do.

"What cost?" Dumbledore muttered. "What could be so terrible as to repulse even the wicked?"

"The powers of a necromancer can only be achieved by someone willing to suffer chronic agony. You have to sell your soul to antediluvian evils beyond our comprehension. It consumes you, twists you, and in the end you don't even recognize the monster that you've become," Severus rattled off harshly. "Mage Hunters know the signs of someone who consorts with…demons. If the Dark Lord has, indeed, been foolish enough to split his soul, he will suffer for every second that he lingers between life and death. Even if he manages to recover the fragments, he will never be free of pain. If he has sworn a pact with a spiritual creature…then we may be facing something altogether more sinister than Tom Riddle ever was. Little would remain of the man he had once been. The question should not be 'what cost is so terrible to dissuade wicked men from necromancy?' but rather 'What cause could be so compelling to force wicked men to necromancy.' Rest assured; no sane man would choose it willingly."

"Tom always suffered from a single crippling fear," Dumbledore murmured. "Death was the only thing that could perturb him. He would have done anything to escape it. But I don't think he would have been so desperate as to throw away his humanity in the process. He was also a prideful man, who bowed knee to no one."

"There is a certain allure to the dark Arts that the Dark Lord appreciated well. It is possible he took things too far and found himself trapped. he was increasingly unstable towards the end of the first war," Severus pointed out. "Whatever he _has_ done: he will be impossible to kill so long as remnants of his soul remain on Earth. There are…many rituals that he could use to recover a body without possession, most sacrificial in nature. I'm surprised he has not already performed one of them. There are some advantages to being a shade, however, which is probably why he has waited so long to show himself. Who knows what he has been doing on the continent for all these years?"

"I assumed that he had been so weakened by the destruction of his body that he had been effectively exiled," Dumbledore said, gripping his knees tightly and leaning forward. "Are you saying that he could have been active for almost eleven years? Recruiting, gathering power and fell knowledge?"

"It is exceedingly likely. In fact, I would not be surprised if there were other shades in the dark places of the world that were only too eager to consort with a fellow necromancer of Riddle's power and ambition," Snape drawled, expressing his disgust for Dumbledore's lack of foresight in a simple expression of his eyebrow. "You should have come to me with your suspicions _earlier_ , Albus. This negligence could mean the end for us and for Britain. We should contact the Mage Hunter's Guild and alert the International Confederation of Wizards immediately. Active shades are nothing to trifle with."

"Our immediate concern is Harry," the headmaster redirected the conversation, looking deeply troubled. "Do you know of any way to save him?"

"He can save himself," Snape replied, darkly. "But there is nothing that you or I can do to aid him. There are legends of men that could banish demons from others, but no one alive today could claim that ability. Either he frees himself from the Dark Lord's hold, or he is utterly consumed. Quirrel lasted roughly six months before he finally succumbed, and he was an experienced Mage Hunter. I know little about their secretive order, but they are the best of the best. How long do you think an untrained eleven-year old boy can resist?"

Silence fell upon them like chains, settling oppressively in the air. A terrible decision laid before them, one that neither man was willing to face, and for a time, Dumbledore could only stare blankly at the flagstones of the dungeon, blinking tears from his eyes and swallowing the painful lump in his throat.

"Have I truly failed him so utterly, Severus? Have I doomed Harry to a slow, inevitable demise by the torturous schemes of a shade?"

"Yes," Severus answered simply, although he appeared just as weary as his old mentor. "I never thought you were a fool, Albus. I'm sorry to say you've proven me wrong."

Dumbledore breathed shakily, straightened his shoulders, and spoke the words that neither man was willing to acknowledge. "We must kill him, then. Tom Riddle cannot be allowed to exist in the body of the Boy-Who-Lived."

"Try not to make thing's worse," the potions master replied acerbically. "He has little enough power as a schoolboy. Especially considering the way that Lucius is going after Potter in the Prophet. The boy's fame has become infamy; he will have negligible political influence when he gains his majority."

"What, you think to leave him be? In a school full of children?"

Snape snorted. "Don't talk to _me_ about bringing Dark Lords to schools full of children, Albus. There are advantages to allowing things to stand."

At Dumbledore's skeptical look, Snape stood up and began to pace like a caged tiger.

"If we know that he possesses Potter, then he is no longer in hiding. We can monitor his movements more easily, and when we eventually choose to strike against him, he will be fighting against us where we are at our strongest: Hogwarts. There is also the small matter of the Dark Lord's soul. While his shade inhabits Potter, he cannot wander the face of the Earth at will, poisoning the minds of aspiring Dark wizards everywhere and turning more wands to his cause," Severus explained patiently. "Furthermore, should we manage to capture Potter without killing him and expelling the shade, we can lock him away, forcing the Dark Lord to take more drastic measures if he wishes to locate. There are wards that can trap spirits as well as men."

"It seems a cruel thing," Albus replied quietly. "How could we justify such heartless things? Against a child?"

Severus raised a dark eyebrow. "And yet you propose _murder_?"

The old man sighed, remembering another time, long ago, when he had been forced into a similar decision. There was not a single day since that he had not regretted the role he had played in the imprisonment of Grindelwald; he wished that he had been strong enough to do the merciful thing. It would have been a kindness then, to kill that fallen Dark Lord, rather than allow him to be stripped of his power and cast into the cold depths of a dungeon in Nuremburg.

Would he now make the same decision with young Harry?

"Okay," he eventually spoke in a voice thick with fatigue. "We'll wait. Watch Harry very closely; if he _is_ the Heir of Slytherin, then he will lead us to the Chamber of Secrets. Perhaps answers can be found there. In the meantime, it seems that I have some studying to do. It's been a long time since I last visited the library…"

* * *

Harry could feel the noose tightening around his neck with every passing day. The Daily Prophet continued to drag his name through the mud, further convincing his peers at Hogwarts of his guilt and gradually turning the wider population against him. It took some time to subvert eleven years of popular novels and songs written using his name, but progress was being made swiftly, and Harry found himself in a dangerous position.

Students were being petrified, and he was being set up as a scapegoat. He could see it happening clear as day, and there remained nothing that he could do to stop it. Someone powerful and wealthy was pulling the strings of the Daily Prophet, and a short investigation into the Daily Prophet's Board of Directors and stock ownership had told him the names of his enemies.

In descending order of their stakes in the Daily Prophet, they were Malfoy, Parkinson, Rosier, Nott, Goyle.

In short, the backbone of the Traditionalist faction in the Wizengamot, which wasn't entirely unexpected. Citizens with integrity wouldn't resort to smear campaigns via newspaper, and had no reason to invest in the Prophet.

Harry could see the thoughts of the Traditionalist's clearly: Potter was very influential as a result of his heroic reputation, Potter could be used against them after he reaches his majority, therefore Potter must be discredited before he can become a threat.

But who was _really_ responsible for the petrifications at Hogwarts? That was the hang-up. Somehow, they either had orchestrated the attacks or had known previously that they were going to happen and were taking advantage of the opportunity.

Harry remembered the elf that had visited him over the summer and wished that the poor creature could have given him a name…

"Hello," Luna greeted him, sitting down beside him and plopping a stack of books onto the table. She was the only one that didn't explicitly avoid him; in fact, she was almost always at his side. The other students had taken to avoiding her just as they had been avoiding Harry, and in many ways it was Luna's reputation that Harry was more concerned for.

He didn't care much for his fame or infamy, but he would rather not see his friends suffer for it. After selling him out to the Prophet, Hermione seemed content to enact a damage control policy regarding their friendship, avoiding him with almost as much energy as the rest of the student body.

Harry found that he didn't miss her as much as he had imagined.

"Luna," he greeted her. "Have you found anything about Slytherin's monster?"

"It's a snake," she told him.

"I knew that," Harry replied dryly. She giggled, pulling a particularly thick book from her stack and shoving it under his nose. The smell of old parchment and dust smacked him in the face, and he had to blink the dust from his eyes before he could read the words on the page.

It was a mostly incomprehensible passage of old English, which contained a reference to Slytherin's monster as "a great and terrible snake."

"It's a start," she told him. "Besides, given the death, petrifications, and the massacred cocks, I think the answer is quite obvious."

"Death?" Harry asked urgently, glancing up. "Someone has been killed?"

"Fifty years ago," Luna replied in her own fashion, which was slow and somewhat detached. Harry saw the mirth in her wide eyes and wasn't fooled by her ruse.

"Very funny," he muttered. "Who was it?"

"Myrtle."

The raven-haired boy leaned back in his seat and groaned as the realization struck. "A basilisk," he whispered. "It's a ruddy great basilisk, Luna!"

The girl smiled and nodded. The question remained: where was the Chamber of Secrets? Harry didn't even know where to begin; there were precious few surviving records of the Founders' time, and those that remained were written in Latin. Considering the clandestine nature of the Chamber, it was highly unlikely that there would be any obvious references to its location, and the matter was further complicated by the fact that Hogwarts had such a mercurial architecture. Sometimes it seemed as if whole corridors could move just like the staircases in the central keep. The dungeons, especially, were notorious for their labyrinthine nature.

"If I were you, I would use the spiders," Luna told him. She leaned forward to whisper into his ear. "Spiders always run away from a basilisk."

Harry stood up immediately, laying his hands on Luna's shoulders and flashing his teeth in a dangerous smile. "Thank you," he told her. Her cheeks reddened slightly as she blinked up at him, and with that, Harry swept away to begin his search.

* * *

Ginevra Molly Weasley's hand were shaking. Muscles in her arms jumped and worked uselessly as she held the wicked book away from her body, above the perfectly still water in the toilet. The name which was embossed on the cover winked at her in the moonlight, and her skin crawled as she remembered the things that she had done.

It had all come back in a rush. The roosters, Mrs. Norris, Penelope, Colin, and now…Hermione. Guilt and horror squirmed within her, warring for dominance, but no matter how fiercely she wished that she could throw the accursed thing away, that she could conjure flames hot enough to cleanse herself its taint, there was something unspeakable that had corrupted her, something dark and terrible, and its hold over her was stronger than her horror.

It held her fingers taut about the hard brown cover. Ginny felt it then, a poisonous thing, and her horror reached new heights as she brought the book back by degrees, clutching it against her racing heart.

 _You're mine,_ she heard whispered at her ear. She could practically feel the clammy, sickening breath against her neck. She closed her eyes, trying desperately to breath past the icy pressure in her chest, but her body didn't want to cooperate anymore. It had a mind of its own.

It had come from the book. Ginny saw it clearly now, saw how foolish she had been to confide in this, an artifact of terrible power. Suddenly she could feel the warm blood of the roosters soaking through her robes as she walked stiffly back to the castle, she remembered the way that she had stunned them and twisted their necks between her hands. She remembered walking beside an incredible snake, whispering to it in a sibilant voice, leading it towards her victims.

She remembered how the cat had interrupted her on that first night. Oh, how _hot_ her fury had burned that night, how _delicious._ Ginny wanted to scream as the memories tormented her. She wanted to puke when she felt the sick satisfaction that had swelled within her breast at the sight of Hermione's twisted, frozen face.

Ginny choked on a sob as her body swung about, pushing the door to the stall open. She moved like someone entirely unused to their limbs, all stumbling, awkward, and clumsy. She found herself before that familiar sink, the one with the small snake engraved behind the faucet, and that disgusting language poured from her unwilling mouth.

It yawned open before her, an impenetrable blackness, and Ginny threw herself into the opening. Only then, when she was past the point of no return, did control return to her limbs, and it was only now—when there was no one there to hear her—that she could bring herself to scream.


	25. Part 2 Chapter 11

Part 2 Chapter 11

 _Her body will lie in the Chamber forever._

Harry Potter stood alone in the moonlit corridor, hidden by Death's cloak, staring grimly at these words, painted in blood just the same as the rest. At once, he knew that this was the endgame, that his enemies had begun to pull the noose tight around his neck. They had spent weeks now propping him up, printing articles, encouraging a specific set of rumors, and Harry had no doubt that they had arranged this final scene, this tragedy, to force the Ministry to take action. There would be no time for investigations, no consideration for such meaningless things as _evidence_. A murder at Hogwarts would be enough to enrage thousands of wizards and witches across Britain, and their ire would force the Ministry to act.

It all came down to this.

No doubt, the words would be discovered when the sun came up, or perhaps even earlier than that if Filch somehow stumbled across it in his patrols. When that happened, students would be called to their common rooms for attendance, the missing student identified, and everyone would be forced to remain under careful observation while the DMLE came in an attempt to rescue the victim.

No doubt, they would have no trouble finding her. She was probably dead already. They would find the body, and they could come for their prime suspect: Harry James Potter.

Harry withdrew the jar of spiders that he had gathered in the last several days. He had already marked several locations which had a good chance of being an entrance to the Chamber, and now was the time to confirm his suspicions. All he had to do was release a few spiders and watch them run.

He started in the dungeons, moving quickly. The spiders seemed rather comfortable there, in no great hurry to get anywhere at all, so Harry quickly moved up to the ground floor. He wandered the halls, dropping a spider every once in a while, collecting them again if he could manage it, searching every alcove and closet that he could find. An hour passed, then two, and he found no trace of a secret corridor or a hidden door.

He moved up to the second floor, and noted that the spiders desperately avoided the library, and generally sought to move down to the ground floor. He searched the library briefly, but eventually realized that the spiders were only reacting to the location of several of the attacks. Students had been petrified twice on the second floor.

So he went up. The third floor had been restored to its usual state, mostly empty classrooms. Harry checked each momentarily, and the spiders that he released were beginning to show signs of desperation. Some of them went for the windows, others straight for the stairs. They ducked into the desks, into cracks between the flagstones, and into the spaces behind the bookshelves.

He was getting close. But now their primal terror was so strong that they were unpredictable. They would be no help to him now.

* * *

It was early morning when Harry found himself in Myrtle's bathroom. He stood, invisible, between the sinks and the stalls, listening to the ghost's soft cries, and after a time he allowed his invisibility to fall, tapping the stall door lightly with his hand. At once, sound stopped, and Myrtle phased through the door to hang before him with her arms crossed petulantly across her incorporeal chest.

"This is the _girls'_ bathroom," she admonished. Harry nodded.

"Yes, I know. I wanted to talk to you."

This, more than the fact that it was four o'clock in the morning, or the fact that he was a boy in the girl's loo, or the fact that he had appeared out of thin air, seemed to surprise the ghost. So much that her form swayed low enough to touch the stones before she rose up once again, clasping her hands together in excitement. " _Me?_ No one ever comes just to talk to me!"

"It must be very lonely here," Harry began.

"Very," she agreed. "You can't even imagine how it feels. Do you what year it is?"

The simple question struck Harry profoundly, and he had to swallow the lump in his throat to answer. "It is 1993," he replied.

"Fifty years…" she whispered. "It's been fifty years since I died."

"How did it happen?" Harry asked tentatively. He wasn't very familiar with the mannerisms of ghosts, and feared that his question might have been an offensive one. He was unprepared for her expression to light up spectacularly, and her form swooped low until she was just inches from his face.

"I came up here to cry because Paul said such nasty things to me, and I was sitting in that stall, just there. And then, I heard this terrible hissing voice, and the sound of stones grinding. I was so terrified that I jumped up on the toilet and held my hands over my mouth. There was a scraping, groaning tremor in the walls, and the door to my stall burst open. Then…I died," she related the tale with a dramatic pause at the very end, speaking the words in a strange, almost fond manner. When she finished, she moved away from him just slightly, and her ghostly eyes inspected him.

"You aren't nearly as lively as the others," she said. "There's a heavy weight in the air around you, a cold feeling. Maybe only ghosts can feel it…"

"It was this stall, then?" Harry asked, stepping forward. "The one just across from the sink?"

"Yes," she replied. She followed him as he approached the sink and bent his head down to inspect the faucet.

There, a snake was engraved, just behind the plumbing, where it would be most difficult to see. The stone had worn away some, and there was a white film over it that further obscured the marking, but it was clear enough to Harry now that he was looking at it this closely.

"So it was here, all this time?" he whispered.

Myrtle, who was hovering just above his shoulder, gasped reared up, away from him. "The Chamber?"

Harry took a slow breath and spoke. _"Open."_

He felt his magic churn, saw a blue light crawl along the stones, and before him an opening began to appear. Stones ground softly against each other, and the sink collapsed into the floor, disappearing through the stone as if it were water. It was a wide, circular opening, with a clean rim. The interior was shrouded by impenetrable darkness.

Above him, Myrtle was shaking her head. "I knew something strange was going on. I heard someone messing around in here many times, but I was trapped in my stall until they were gone. I didn't even know there was magic that could trap a ghost."

A small pout on her translucent features made Harry offer a wan smile. "I have to go. There's a student in great peril."

"I should tell the Headmaster."

"Wait," Harry stopped her, leaning heavily on his black staff. "Give me fifteen minutes, then fetch the Headmaster. Please."

The ghost eyed him closely, and nodded. Harry weaved a cushioning charm around his knees and feet, steeled himself with a breath, and stepped into the abyss.

The winding chute deposited him in utter darkness quite unceremoniously. It struck him first that the air was thick and difficult to breathe here, in the bowels of the earth, and he felt an oppressive heat pressing against him in spite of the cool reassurance of Death's cloak. It was a combination of the choking dust and the stench of rot that gave the impression of warmth, and Harry fumbled for a moment in the dark before he pushed magic through his staff and illuminated his surroundings with a pale, shadow-less blue light.

It was a compact antechamber, carved from the deep stone. Circular, with twisting columns standing from the roughened stone floor to the low ceiling, the chamber walls were pitted and unsettling, covered with the evidence of a thousand years spent at the mercy of nature. Even magic could not back the world.

Harry ambled slowly between the columns, searching the shadows as he went, halting now and again to inspect the arcane markings that glimmered at him from the stones as he passed. There was a thick layer of dust on the ground, and footprints wound into the darkness before him, the markings of someone with smaller feet than his own, and with a short stride. The evidence of numerous trips was visible, and Harry knew at once that whoever had made those prints was the one that he was looking for. If he could find them, he could prove his innocence.

So he followed that trail, deeper into the Chamber, around the molted skin of the basilisk, through the tightly crowded columns, until the corridor opened up into a wider room, with a domed ceiling and the frenetic light of a torch. It flickered, a beacon in the pitch black, and Harry could see the figure of a girl outlined by the harsh orange light. She laid motionless in the dust, facedown, and Harry hesitated at the entrance to the chamber, wondering if this was the student that had been kidnapped.

He stepped slowly into the larger chamber, allowing his staff to pulse brighter to illuminate the curved ceiling and the majestic statues that stood vigil around the perimeter of the room. It was very reminiscent of the other chamber, where he had entered, but the walls here were better preserved. The statues were pristine, carved immaculately from the stone, with expressions of superiority and fury on their features. This was what remained of the greatest warlocks of Slytherin's time: nameless statues. Each one represented a great man, some of the most powerful that had ever lived, and time had eradicated them utterly.

Even history did not remember them.

Harry stopped some yards from the prone girl, realizing at once that there wasn't anyone else in the chamber. Only one set of footprints was visible in the dust, and they led directly to the small, unconscious girl. Now that Harry's light had reached the farthest extremes of the domed chamber, he knew that he was alone here. For a moment, he thought that it was the end, that he had played perfectly into their trap…

The girl was dead already, as he had imagined, but here he was, alone with the corpse, and Dumbledore to be alerted in mere minutes. Caught at the scene of the crime, he would be blamed for her death, and there would be nothing that he could say to dissuade them.

 _But then he saw that she was breathing_.

The gentle rise of her back was almost impossible to see because of her robes and the playing light of the torch, but he caught it, and hope bloomed in him again. He stepped swiftly forward and turned her onto her back, pausing for a moment when he saw who it was. A book tumbled from her chest and fell into the dust, throwing clouds of the stuff into the air.

It was Ginny Weasley, the youngest of the family. A first-year Slytherin, pureblood.

It didn't make sense. The other victims had been muggleborn. Numb, Harry found her pulse and breathed easily, rising once more to his feet and glancing around the chamber once more.

He saw the thing that he feared then, drifting towards him from the shadows. The light from the torch seemed to fail the moment it touched the mass of shadow and crimson light that hung above the stones, but Harry's staff revealed it in its horrible entirety. His features hardened as he put a name to the specter.

"Tom Riddle," he said, and his voice echoed throughout the chamber.

"Harry Potter," came the reply, distorted and low. "I'm surprised. How did you come down into this place?"

"I found the entrance," Harry replied. "What have you done to Miss Weasley?"

"She won't wake," Tom replied. "I was going to leave her for you, once my message was discovered. After our last encounter, I thought that you deserved something special. I hoped that you might have been a worthy opponent. But, alas, it was all too easy to destroy you."

"It is not over yet," Harry replied. "You'll fail."

He bent down and picked up the book. It felt slick and cold in his hand, and he knew it to be the product of the Dark Arts. He extended his magic, brushing against the thing that he held, and he recoiled as soon as the feedback reached him, dropping it as if it had burned him.

"A horcrux," Harry muttered. "So _that_ was what you did."

The shade pulsed briefly, and shadows extended from it until it appeared to be more like a man. Or the silhouette of a man. The face was dark red and glowing, and its body was without form. It was shadow in the shape of a man, but there was nothing human about it. "I was right to fear you," Tom Riddle said. "I saw how dangerous you would become, even when you were a child. The prophecy was nothing. Once I laid my eyes on you as a babe…I knew."

"I can destroy this," Harry told the shade. "Fiendfyre."

"That is a suicidal thought," Riddle told him. "You are weak. It would consume you and the girl as well, before it spread throughout the Chamber to the school. How many people would you kill with that single spell?"

"I can cast it, control it," Harry replied. "Shall I prove it to you?"

His staff transformed into a spear, and the gem glowed menacingly. Harry leveled the sharp points against the brown cover of the book, watching the shade closely.

"If you destroy that book, I will kill the girl. You will be imprisoned anyway," Riddle countered swiftly. "It's over. You've lost. They'll come for you, soon, and find you here with the girl. You'll go to my little prison, and I'll let you rot there until I'm ready to deal with you properly."

"If I'll be imprisoned either way, then I might as well destroy a piece of your soul before the Aurors arrive," Harry answered quietly.

"If you destroy the book, you destroy all that stands as evidence of your innocence," Riddle retorted. "You will condemn yourself."

"It is your soul," Harry dismissed. "That isn't important to you?"

The shade twisted viciously, and Harry knew that he had the advantage. The ability to destroy a thing is absolute power over it, and Harry had Riddle's soul at the tip of his spear.

" _Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Founders Four,"_ the shade hissed, pulsing bright. At once, the wall at the far end of the chamber collapsed like the stones at Diagon alley, and the basilisk squirmed in the shadows within.

Harry hesitated, and reluctantly shifted his attention to the snake. He didn't know what abilities the shade possessed, but he figured that Riddle would have cursed him by now if he had been able to do so, so he hoped that he could be able to handle the basilisk and return to the diary later.

The snake emerged swiftly, and Harry averted his eyes as he blew large chunks of stone from the floor into its path. Jagged chips of the stone whistled through the air and bit into the thick hide of the reptile, but it didn't seem to deter it overly much, since its charge did not diminish. Unable to actually look at the head of the sake, Harry glanced instead at its undulating body.

He saw its incredible size and felt fear in his belly. This was a magnificent beast, a thing of legend, and it was bearing down upon him swiftly.

He redirected his focus from the floor to the ceiling. The gem in his spear flashed white, and a lance of orange light spat from the blades, burrowing into the stones above and detonating with a deafening _BOOM._ The ground shook and the snake rose up, preparing to strike at him in the wake of his ostensibly failed curse.

The rocks tumbled down in a deluge, massive and unstoppable. The basilisk shot forward, hissing as its jaw yawned before him, larger than Harry's entire height from head to foot. He staggered back, throwing his arm over his eyes, and felt a burning agony in wrist just as he hit the stones, feeling as the earth bucked and trembled under him.

It seemed to go on forever, both the fiery pain in his arm and the collapse that Harry's spell had caused. He gasped, pulling uselessly on his arm, and when he finally opened his eyes he saw that it had been pierced through by one of the basilisk's smaller teeth. Its jaw was open and turned somewhat sideways, with the tongue sticking from its mouth and laying in the dust. The snake's deadly eyes were empty and dull.

Harry pulled his left arm from where it was impaled upon the snake's tooth and felt blood running down his skin to pool in his palm. Worse, he felt the chilling progress of the venom in his blood, bringing him nearer to his death with each beat of his heart. His eyes focused intently upon the black lines that crawled along his veins, starkly visible against his pale skin.

He stood and staggered, turning to face the shade, which watched frim from beside Ginny's pale, motionless form.

"Now you will die," Riddle told him. "And you will not die a hero or a martyr, but as a villain. Your name will be the blackest name throughout Britain for months, and by the time I truly return, it will have been forgotten."

"No…" Harry gasped, staggering forward. He meant to reach the horcrux and incinerate it with Fiendfyre as he drew his last, but strength failed him and he hit the floor, feeling the cold stone on his cheek.

It was quiet in the chamber now. the air was still thick, and the dust made his eyes itch, but Harry found that it wasn't a bad way to go. The venom was painful; it had started to burn more fiercely now. He had heard that basilisk venom was a terrible way to die, but it didn't feel so terrible. Not yet.

In moments, he felt the fire in his veins and knew exactly why the books had told him that it was a painful death. His breath came in gasps, filled with the choking dust, and he struggled even to raise his head, glancing at Ginny, the girl that he had failed to save, and the dark book that laid innocuously in the dust.

It was the first time that he had felt truly helpless since Death had appeared to him in that dark cupboard. That, more than the pain or the fact that he was dying, was what ruined him.

"Please," he gasped, speaking at once to Death or El or whoever he was, and to nothing. "Please…"

A burst of flame pierced the dark shroud that had begun to fall over his eyes, and he saw Fawkes then, the Headmaster's phoenix. It landed beside him, trilling a comforting song, and the pain seemed to recede just enough for Harry to breathe one last time.

The tears of a phoenix fell, too late, and they glittered on the dead boy's arm.


	26. Part 2 Chapter 12

Part 2 Chapter 12

Harry awakened and groaned. Pain flared up throughout his body, the aching remembrance of a much worse agony, and he sucked in a harsh breath when it sharpened from a dull ache to a piercing sort of burn. Dust choked him and he coughed, rolling suddenly onto his back.

"Impossible," he heard a voice exclaim, but his mind was far afield, and he couldn't bring himself to open his eyes.

He laid for a moment in silence breathing and feeling the pain throughout his body with each intake of the thick air. Then he remembered his purpose and his eyes opened.

He was alive. Had Fawkes saved him after all? Or was it Death's hand in evidence here, as it had been before?

With a tremendous effort, Harry levered himself to his feet with his staff, leaning more upon it than he had ever done before, half bent as he swayed on his feet. He saw the shade then, hanging low over Ginny's body, sweeping tendrils of magic over her skin, and the book lying open. He felt his magic coursing hot in his veins, twisting in him like it had never done before.

There was an edge of agony to it, and it reminded Harry of the basilisk.

"You lose, Tom," he managed to say past his dry, dust-choked throat. He gathered magic in his staff, hesitated just briefly at the prospect of casting this, the darkest spell that he had ever attempted, and then released his power with a whisper. "Fiendfyre."

Regardless of the Ministry's classifications, Fiendfyre was not of the Dark Arts. It did not require hatred or anger or fear to cast. It did not feed directly on emotion like the Killing Curse or the Cruciatus Curse.

It was a wild expression of magic, a conjuration and a curse. It was not an attack but an act of creation. Harry's magic rushed from him and took form in the air as a twisted, man-like creature of flame. Only as tall as his hips, the Fiendfyre rushed forward in the manner of a savage, using its legs and its arms to bound swiftly over the stones. As it went, it pulsed and grew, feeding on the magic in the air and in the earth, growing stronger and more difficult to harness.

The shade hissed in fury and disappeared the moment the Fiendfyre laid its hands on the horcrux. Harry saw the dark, unspeakable horror burst from the pages in a spray of black fluid, only for the conjured elemental to lash out, gripping the spirit in its burning hands.

" _Potter!"_ the shade screamed as Harry's spell performed the unnatural, feasting on the shade and the horcrux. A wet crunch marked the end of that soul, and the wild thing continued to tear and rip, peeling away at the magic that protected it until it was laid bare and vulnerable. Gradually, the pages curled and blackened, turned to ash, smoldered white-hot, and finally scattered.

Once the horcrux was obliterated, Harry exerted his control and forced the Fiendfyre to step away from Ginny, but he could feel its desire to consume her. He struggled against the hunger through its connection to him, through the insistent strain that it put on his last, the thing stepped away from her, turning to face Harry instead. The boy sensed its untamable power, the ravenous desire that burned within the magical construct, and he realized suddenly why it was considered an evil spell.

It wouldn't destroy you out of hatred or anger or any of that. It wasn't an expression of evil. But it was a thing of extremes, and it represented the savage power of magic. It was a chaotic being, and it would destroy indiscriminately. There was no concept of friend or foe to this thing, this creation of Harry's. it would do what it had been made to do, and it would do it utterly _._

Harry killed it with an exertion of his magic that left him breathless. The fiery creature faded away in black smoke, and the ache in Harry's bones was joined by a deep, abiding fatigue.

Stepping forward, Harry fell to his knees beside Ginny Weasley and held his fingers to her neck, hoping against hope that there would be a pulse. Riddle had told him what would happen if he destroyed the horcrux, but there had always been a chance that it was a lie.

After almost a minute, Harry concluded that Tom Riddle had told him the truth. She was dead. Distantly, he heard the sound of approaching voices and laughed in a dry, rasping voice.

So this was it.

Glancing at his staff, he was filled with a sudden fury, and he seized it in both hands to strike it upon the stones. What remained of his magic surged, and the darkened length of wood shattered into a thousand pieces beside the corpse of Ginny Weasley.

Harry rose to his feet and turned to face his fate.

* * *

The cell that they kept him in was comfortable enough, but this was not Azkaban. Not yet, anyway. It was a ministry holding cell, meant for prisoners awaiting trial, and because it had been designed for those who were not yet proven innocent or guilty, it had a few small amenities that made it less of a dungeon than the ruthless confines of Azkaban.

Not that Harry had any idea what Azkaban was like. He had read about it, of course, but the rest of his dread was supplied by his overactive imagination, which conjured enough horror for him to have trouble sleeping on the thin cot that they had provided him. His staff was broken, so they thought that he was harmless.

They still posted guards by his cell.

Harry didn't really know what he had expected. Dumbledore and a squad of aurors rushing forward and arresting him without so much as a 'how do you do?' was not it, however. Harry supposed that he had at least expected the Headmaster to say something to him, or maybe appoint a barrister as his legal counsel, but that had not happened.

No one had come. He had expected his new guardians at least, but even they were either content to forget about him or were kept from him by the Ministry.

And then the Auror had come. "Up you get," he had said. "Time to face the music."

Now he stood before the closed double doors leading to the chambers of the Wizengamot. According to the guard, all twenty-seven of the Lords would be there, ready to pass judgement. The man had said it with a sort of gleeful color in his tone, and Harry knew already what their verdict would be. He was completely calm when the doors opened and he was led forward, with chains ringing hollowly about his arms and legs, to sit down in a chair before the amphitheater of nobles.

The chamber was organized like one might expect. There were three raised wooden platforms at the front of the chamber, where the Chief Warlock, Minister, and scribe were seated. An empty half-circle remained there, and it was in this place that Harry's chair was situated, facing the gradually climbing arrangement of chairs, where the rest of the government were seated. They all stared down at him with unreadable expressions, faces wrinkly and hard, but Harry was particularly interested in the woman that was seated just a few yards away from him, dressed in an atrocious pink petticoat and slacks, with a wide-brimmed white hat upon her head. Her face had a distinctly toad-like appearance to it, with broad lips and wide, upturned nostrils. Her eyes seemed wet and pronounced, focused upon him like a frog's upon a fly.

Murmurs rose and fell throughout the chamber as the aurors carried on behind him, speaking to the scribe and the Chief Warlock. Harry waited patiently, until Dumbledore stood up and began.

"Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot, welcome to this, the nine-hundred ninety seventh meeting of the British Wizengamot. Allow me to call this meeting to order."

Silence settled over the assembled peers of the realm, and Dumbledore continued. "We begin today with the trial of the accused, Harry James Potter, for the crimes of assault, murder, and the use of outlawed magic. I will allow The Senior Undersecretary of Magic, Madam Dolores Umbridge, to handle the questioning of the accused."

With this, the woman stood and gave a shallow bow at the waist. "Thank you, Chief Warlock. Allow me to begin by stating the facts of the case."

She descended a few steps and turned to face the Wizengamot. "Harry Potter attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he instigated a series of attacks upon his fellow students using a basilisk that had been sealed in Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets. These attacks led to the petrification of Penelop Clearwater, Colin Creevey, and Hermione Granger, three muggle-born students of various ages. His actions culminated in the kidnapping and murder of Ginevra Molly Weasley, the youngest daughter of the Weasley family, whereupon he was found at the scene of the crime and arrested by Aurors from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

She paused momentarily, and Harry could hear the subtle hints of pleasure in her voice as she continued. "Due to the heinous nature of his crimes, and the severity of the charges allayed against him, I have arranged for the accused to be questioned under veritaserum."

The doors of the chamber opened, and a thin, pale man stepped through, bowing once to the Chief Warlock and again to Madam Umbridge.

"I will test the accused, and if he does not possess abilities as an Occlumens, I will administer the serum," the man declared. Harry winced slightly and followed the inquisitor with his eyes until the man was standing directly in front of him. A long moment passed where nothing was said or done, before the man blinked solidly and shook his head.

"The accused has significant occlumency barriers in place," he said.

Veritaserum was ineffective against an occlumens. Harry had mediocre skill in the area, but it was Death's cloak that protected his mind absolutely. It was no surprise that the man had mistaken that protection as occlumency, and Harry was not going to correct him, even if it sealed his fate. To lose the cloak…that was a fate he would not suffer.

Harry was just glad that they hadn't managed to take it before he had hidden it from their sight. When Death's cloak was entirely invisible, it also became intangible, and they hadn't even noticed it when they had searched his body for weapons. He was sure Dumbledore would have caught its absence when they searched his belongings, but with no way of forcing him to reveal the cloak, they couldn't take it from him.

Once the inquisitor was gone, Madam Umbridge faced Harry directly. "Mr. Potter," she began. "Do you offer anything in your own defense against the charges which have been laid against you?"

Harry cleared his throat. "The only charges I will contest are these: the petrification of three of my fellow students and the use of the Dark Arts."

"You claim that you did _not_ command the basilisk to attack students in Hogwarts?" the undersecretary asked him.

"I do."

The woman smiled. "Mr. Potter, it is widely known that you are a parselmouth. No one else could have commanded the beast."

"It was released without commands, and it preyed on the students because it had been locked away for many years."

Murmuring broke out throughout the chamber, and eventually died down as Madam Umbridge cleared her throat with a percussive _hem-hem._ "Who would have released the beast except for you, the Heir of Slytherin?"

"I am not the Heir of Slytherin," Harry objected sternly. "The chamber was opened by Ginevra Weasley."

At this, an outcry rose up from several of the participating Wizengamot members, and it took a minute to settle them. Madam Umbridge returned to her questions with hard, calculating eyes. "You declared yourself the Heir of Slytherin last year in Defense Against the Dark Arts. There were several witnesses to that event."

"It was meaningless rhetoric," Harry dismissed. "I cannot be the Heir while another yet lives with a superior claim."

A pregnant pause.

"Who?"

"Tom Riddle."

The woman looked entirely confused, and she was interrupted by the Chief Warlock . "The questioning has wandered rather far afield, Madam Umbridge."

She nodded briskly. "Why do you claim that Ginevra Weasley was the one to open the Chamber of Secrets?"

Harry wondered if there was anything that he could say which would convince them, but he knew that there was no evidence to his claims. That was what she was doing with these questions. It was stringing him along, making him reach out with his explanations, and she would cut him loose with a final, destructive query.

"I found her there, when I went down into the Chamber," he replied.

"How could she have opened the Chamber without being a parselmouth?"

"She carried with her an enchanted artifact which she used to open the Chamber of Secrets," he replied. In reality, the artifact had used her to open the chamber, but he knew that his story was outlandish enough without Horcruxes and Voldemort involved in the narrative.

"And where is this artifact now?" Umridge asked. There was the killing blow.

"I destroyed it," Harry was forced to reply.

"Yes, and how did you do that?"

Now salt in the wound. "I cast Fiendfyre, which incinerated the item."

It was then that his fate was sealed. The questioning would continue, but it was all form without substance, procedure without meaning. Their minds were made up with that admission.

"Mister Potter, you were involved in several altercations with other students in Slytherin. You cast bone-breaking curses at Theodore Nott and Marcus Flint. Is this true?"

"I was defending myself, yes," Harry answered her tiredly.

"And you also confronted and killed Quirinus Quirrel," she continued. "A man who was well respected in his profession as a Mage Hunter, and a highly qualified instructor of his subject."

"Quirinus Quirrel cast the Cruciatus curse…"

"Did you kill him, yes or no?"

"I did," Harry replied, resigned.

"So by Mr. Potter's own admission, he has engaged in violence of several kinds since his arrival at Hogwarts. He has also killed a man, proving himself capable of the act. Searching his personal belongings revealed several texts containing detailed information about the Dark Arts, including titles as widely feared as _Magick Most Vile_ and _The Book of Shadow._ He is the only living parselmouth, and he was found at the scene of the crime. Having stated the case in its entirety, I cede the floor to the Chief Warlock." With this damning pronouncement, the woman returned to her seat and turned her smug expression to Harry's placid visage.

"Thank you, Madam Umbridge," Dumbledore said, his voice amplified and overbearing. "Do any members of the Wizengamot have questions for the accused before a sentence matching the severity of his crimes is determined?"

Unsurprisingly, there were none.

"According to Ministry edicts on the subject of assault, murder, and the use of the Dark Arts, the crimes committed by Harry James Potter, a legal minor, warrant a minimum sentence of fifteen years in Azkaban Prison," Dumbledore intoned. "Anyone who pronounces the accused guilty, light your wands."

A sea of bright light.

"By overwhelming majority, the accused is pronounced guilty. Anyone who wishes to propose an alternative sentence should speak now."

"Life imprisonment," a bold voice declared. All eyes turned to Lucius Malfoy. "The accused is clearly a malevolent boy, twisted irreparably by the Dark Arts. It would be an insult to the victims of his actions to offer such a short sentence, especially considering the fact that a member of the House of Weasley was killed."

A murmur of agreement traveled throughout the Lord and Ladies of the Wizengamot. Harry almost smiled.

"All those in favor of life imprisonment?"

Another sea of lighted wands indicated their general agreement. Harry heard the Chief Warlock sigh and rise to his feet.

"The case of Harry James Potter is concluded. Pronounced guilty by this assembled Wizengamot, he will serve a life sentence in the prison of Azkaban. May God have mercy on his soul."

The Aurors stepped up to him, drew him to his feet. "God won't save you where you're going," one man whispered into his ear as he was pushed forcibly from the chamber.

The irony of that sentence was so poignant that he couldn't help himself. Harry laughed then, a loud piercing sound, and it so startled his guards that they hesitated at the doors to the Wizengamot. His laugh echoed through the expansive chamber eerily, and Harry continued to laugh as he was led through the Ministry, past the crowd that had gathered outside the chambers. He saw Andromeda and Nymphadora there, watching him with accusing eyes. He didn't stop chuckling until they tossed him into his cell.

They didn't even bother to release his chains as they left, slamming the cell door in their wake.

* * *

Harry supposed that they were waiting a day or so before shipping him off, otherwise they would have just taken him directly to his new home from the Wizengamot chambers. Either way, he sat in his holding cell, waiting to see what would become of him. With nothing to do, he sat as comfortably as he could manage with the heavy chains hanging from his shoulders and allowed his thoughts to take him way, beyond the stone walls of his prison.

He focused on the exercises that Death had taught him. He measured his breathing, slowed the cadence of his heart, and investigated his emotions from an aloof perspective. These were the skills that separate men from beasts. He wrestled with the primal fear of the cage, dismissed the fury and frustration that smoldered quietly in the depths of his mind; he calmed the storm until his thoughts were utterly still, and only then did he allow them to roam freely.

El had told him once that purpose could be found in all things, if you took the time to look. The world is an incomplete picture, composed of perspectives, and Harry had only to choose the one that would bring him hope.

Even with his considerable discipline, Harry could not entirely avoid a sense of terrible gravitas. The events that were taking place now would define the future, not only for him as a prisoner, but also for the entirety of the world, British and otherwise. He knew it in his gut, with instincts that had laid dormant until his trial. Every cell in his body was filled with this feeling of inevitability, and his mind turned more and more towards despair in response.

He knew that his enemy was active, gathering strength and allies, working against him from the shadows. He would be severely weakened by imprisonment, incapable of protecting himself or others from the sinister machinations of the Dark Lord. It was only a matter of time.

He saw Tom Riddle walking uncontested into the Ministry of Magic, flanked by the darkly cloaked members of his inner circle. Power was ceded to him without so much as a raised voice in opposition. He saw hunter-killer teams descending on the unsuspecting houses of average children cursed with magic. He saw Hogwarts' crumbling battlements and roaring flames in the Forbidden forest. He saw the shattered ruin of Gringotts.

He saw armies of mechanized infantry marching across a crater-pocked countryside beside their grumbling half-tracks. He saw artillery batteries opening fire on London, he saw Fiendfyre burning freely across a thousand miles of the English countryside. Each and every vision that came to him was worse than the last, and his mounting horror grew more acute with each possible future.

 _Demons are not creatures of logic. They desire destruction, agony, despair; with Tom Riddle as their instrument, they will tear your world apart._

Harry opened his eyes, feeling himself breathing quickly and shallowly. Fear had gripped him, he realized, and it took a moment longer than he would have liked for him to center himself once more.

He saw Dumbledore then, standing before the wrought iron bars of his cell, and Harry stood up slowly, struggling under the weight of his chains and with his old injury. "I knew that you would come," he said to the older man.

"It was always going to come down to this, Tom," Dumbledore replied.

Harry's face screwed up in confusion, but when he finally saw what the Headmaster meant he began to laugh, just as he had laughed in the Chamber of Secrets and at his trial. It was a defeated, broken sound. "So _that_ was the reason why I was not afforded legal counsel. It was within your rights to retain a barrister to act as my representative."

"After the things that you have done, legal counsel would not have saved you."

Harry scoffed. "What _I_ have done? I've defeated Riddle twice since I came to Hogwarts. I've been trying for weeks now to prove that I was innocent. I destroyed Riddle's horcrux with Fiendfyre. I only admitted to Ginevra's death because I failed to save her, but it was Riddle that destroyed her, not I."

"No wizard your age has mastered Occlumency as you have. No wizard your age could have killed that basilisk. No wizard your age would know of horcruxes and possessions," Dumbledore replied calmly. "You cannot convince me with your lies. You should know that your plans end here, Tom. Even shades cannot pass the wards of Azkaban prison."

"That would certainly be a problem if the shade was actually here," Harry retorted blandly. "Have his schemes drawn the wool over your eyes so completely?"

Dumbledore shook his head, continuing as if he hadn't even heard Harry speak. "You could save yourself, if you left Harry's body now. Depart from us, and you'll be free."

There was desperation there, but it was not as strong as the man's righteous conviction. It would not be enough.

"You are an old fool," Harry replied tiredly. "Tom Riddle _isn't here._ He's already beginning his campaign against you, but you don't even recognize the thing that comes to destroy you. You gave mercy to many of his followers, but they have no mercy for you. They will bring your country down around your ears."

They stared at each other, neither understanding the other, until Dumbledore sighed. "Goodbye, Tom."

"When you realize what you've done, it will destroy you. More surely than any curse," Harry said softly. "By that time, it will be far too late to save you."

The old warlock hesitated as he turned, and left Harry to his thoughts.

* * *

So this is what a demon looks like, thought Harry. The dementor's aura was like nothing that Harry had ever experienced before; it was at once crippling and impotent. Fear was paralyzing, but Harry had felt _real_ fear before, as Death held his still-beating heart in his cold hand. Despair was crushing, but Harry had felt his life pouring from his body, and the imitation affected by the demon paled in comparison to actuality. The dementor was so close to him that he could see its desiccated, twisted features under the tattered hood, but he continued to stare into its lifeless, glassy eyes despite the wicked magic that was pouring over him.

The Aurors that were escorting him didn't seem to know what to do, and while the dementor continued to exert its power, none of them dared to intervene.

Harry saw the demon and he understood it. It was a ruinous, twisted creature, a being of power, but it had been shackled to this corrupted mortal coil. Helpless to escape, it turned its vile nature upon the prisoners of Azkaban, satiating its hunger for despair but incapable of reaching satisfaction. It was a beastly creature which yearned to destroy him, but it was held at bay by the same magic that trapped it within that rotted corpse.

Harry realized then that Azkaban was truly a place inhabited solely by prisoners, demons and men alike.

He would have felt some pity for them, but they were demons. Weakened and trapped though they might be, they remained agents of evil, sowers of discord, and the corruptors of the soul. Harry had never felt hatred before, until this moment.

"You _are_ a foul thing," Harry said, carefully controlling his expression. There was fear; he would have been a fool to deny it. His own mind was turning against him with every passing moment, churning with thoughts of despair and death.

Harry realized then that El had been preparing him for this confrontation by teaching him the disciplines of the mind. He had been tempered to resist them, trained to defeat them.

"Be gone," Harry ordered the demon, flushing with a sense of his power. "You have no hold over me."

The dementor groaned audibly, leaning close. Its maw was a gaping thing, and Harry felt ice-cold air against his skin as the demon pulled at his soul. The aurors gasped, obviously catching the dementor's intent, but Harry only snapped his head forward in a vicious head-butt, driving the crown of his head into the dementor's cold, leathery flesh.

It howled in fury and reeled away from him, seeming to grow in size and power, but Harry simply glared up at the darkly cloaked creature. "My soul is not yours to take," Harry bit out, gasping for air.

At this, the dementor screamed, and the sound cut everyone low. The guards fell to their knees with Harry, and all of them swayed dangerously there under the onslaught of sound. The guards had the small comfort of holding their hands over their ears, but Harry was subjected to the full force of the terrible sound. Even after the demon had swept away from them, back across the unsettled sea, his ears rang with the noise.

Eventually, the aurors pulled him up and took him to the ferry that would bring them to the isle of Azkaban. No one said a word during the crossing, but Harry could tell that he had made quite the impression on the guards. They sat far from him, even though they were meant to keep him from escaping, and they refused to meet his eyes.

The castle of Azkaban was, in many ways, similar to Hogwarts. Harry felt each layer of wards as they passed, growing more powerful as they went, and he saw the imposing battlements of the castle's walls against the gray horizon. The castle was taller than Hogwarts, and it seemed to sprout seamlessly from the cliff faces of the island, an extension of the inhospitable landscape. The stones were dark and wet, and the windows were clouded by shadows and fog.

A winding stair was carved into the cliffs, leading from a rocky beach head to the castle's gate. An old wharf served as their anchor-point, and Harry was escorted swiftly to the castle by the aurors. They seemed much less confident in themselves, now that the dementor had fled.

They were met at the gate by the Warden. Framed as he was by the stone arch, he appeared an indomitable figure, with broad shoulders and a square face. His dark eyes glinted at them from below his thick gray eyebrows, and his frown was so severe that Harry wondered if it wasn't carved from stone.

"Where is the dementor?" he asked the moment the aurors were in earshot.

"It flew back," the one holding Harry's left arm replied. "Didn't take too kindly to the prisoner, sir."

"Is that so?" the warden asked, stepping forward. His eyes bored into Harry's and the raven-haired boy sensed the danger in them. "Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. Who would have thought that you'd become a murderer?"

Harry didn't bother to correct the man, and the Warden hadn't seemed to expect it. "Take him to level four."

"Yes, sir."

Harry didn't know the significance of level four, but he felt the trepidation in his escorts and knew that it was something to be feared. They took him into a winding staircase, and down they went. Down, down, down, past windows and boarded passageways. Eventually, the staircase terminated in a cramped, square chamber. Two corridors stretched away, one to the right and one to the left.

The weight of the world pressed down upon them as they walked, and Harry began to hear the screams. At first, he thought that it was just the ambience of the underground, but as it began to build and echo, he realized it was a human voice in agony. They passed cage after cage, cell after cell, each containing its own wretched life-form. Some of them lifted their gaunt faces to see who it was that passed them by, but most of them cowered away from the sound of footsteps.

These were men and women reduced to animals by terror.

Harry saw the demons too, sweeping into the cages and laying their bony fingers on the prisoners, breathing on their necks, playing their emotions like a macabre instrument. Most of them stopped to watch him as he passed, chains rattling with every step, and Harry knew that he had made enemies here already.

They knew his strength and hated it.

 _Come to us, proud one. Come and see what pain your power will bring you._

When they finally reached an empty cell, the guard removed a ring of keys and pried open the stubborn door. Harry stepped into his new home of his own accord, turning to watch the guards depart. They hesitated and then swiftly deserted him. Dementors took their place, crowding the bars of his cell and gazing at him with their empty eyes.

"Hello," Harry whispered, steeling his mind and his body. They phased through the bars of his cell and advanced upon him, intent upon breaking this arrogant prisoner that thought to command one of their own. As they fell upon him, Harry recognized this as a thing that Death had prepared him for.

He would not suffer the products of any bargain between demons and men to linger in this world, even one as ancient and powerful as the dementors of Azkaban.

Wrestling with one demon and managing to drive it away was an impressive feat, but facing a score of them in the heart of their stronghold, weathering the storm of magic in the face of the swarm, that was an impossibility. Harry's mind was unique, it was extraordinary, it was the product of training that no man had ever attempted, but even that could not stand. Not against this.

Harry was stricken by the inescapable fact that _he wasn't ready_. What could possibly have prepared him for this?

Magic swelled within him and lashed out as blue and white fire, it crawled across his limbs and guttered into smoke upon the stone, but the dementors scoffed at his efforts. They collapsed upon him like a wave against the stone faces of the island itself, seizing his arms with their frozen hands. Bony knuckles curled around his neck, splayed against his chest, and they lifted him up, screeching and cavorting in glee. Harry Potter, the champion of El, was helpless against them. His mind quailed at their impossible presence, it broke under the force of their hate, it was scattered by the chaotic energies of their magic. They stripped warmth and life from him, tore his discipline and confidence, and when they finally left him shivering on the stones, there was little that remained of Harry Potter.

The few memories that he had saved from that initial onslaught would be torn from him in the days to come, piece by piece.

This, more than the killing curse, more than hunger, more than the venom of a basilisk or the loss of his blood, was what ruined him. And it was then that he closed his eyes and breathed his last breath as Harry Potter.


	27. Interlude II: Jarl Azkaban

Interlude II: Lord Azkaban

The dreams tortured him. They were not like those that Harry distantly remembered; they were not the comfortable meetings with his master that he had expected. Those, like everything else, had faded, and he was left with these vivid recollections of a distant life, memories which were not his own. He lived a life of dualities, split between the agonies of his waking hours and the profound visions of his dreams.

The thing about dreams that makes them so bittersweet is their impeccable realism. It made waking a dreaded inevitability. For all intents and purposes, these foreign memories were as real as the stone against his face.

It was easy to sleep when there was nothing to look forward to save for ruin. There was no indication of the passage of time, and he could hardly muster the strength to find the chamber pot in the corner of his cell.

When there was no hope, it was better to let time pass him by, better to forget, however momentarily, the agonies of his life. So he closed his eyes and let himself drift away from his dark cell, away from the insistent ministrations of the demons, away from the cold air and insistent hunger. He allowed himself to drift away to the distant past, to an age long forgotten.

* * *

 _The last of the engravings was completed with a somewhat anticlimactic flash of light. After a moment's hesitation, Jarl Azkaban stepped back from the intricately marked walls of this, the inner sanctum of his life's work. Every stone of his castle fed into this warding scheme, every speck of dust was infused with the subtle purposes of this magic. The ley lines which ran like rivers beneath his island fueled the castle, it was what gave him his power, what made him the greatest sorcerer of the North._

 _And he had finished this, his final work, at long last. His posture straightened as if a great weight had been removed from his shoulders, and he felt in that moment as if his youth had returned to him. it was this thing, the keystone of his prison, that would justify the decades of bloodshed and evil. The turmoil of the mainland was beginning to die down, and soon the number of prisoners would increase as the last of the Catholic lords were driven out and the remnants of druidic magic was uprooted._

 _He would require more of his jailers. There seemed to be an endless demand for them in these dark times, and he knew very well that he further risked utter destruction with every one of the creatures that he summoned. There were things that were better suited for the void, and his jailers were one of those things._

 _But while there existed a need for them here, he was forced to retain their services._

 _He took another careful look at the runes which he had carved, the work of many weeks. He committed it to his memory, eying each line and seeing that it was perfect. It would do exactly what he expected. When the time was right, it would bring an end to the evil that he had conjured._

 _He departed from the chamber and sealed the way behind him, walking briskly through the corridors of the tallest keep of his castle. Torches guttered wildly in a chilling breeze, and the Lord Azkaban felt the dangerous storms of Winter coming ever closer. His island would have to prepare itself for the season of ice and seclusion._

 _It was almost impossible for the ferries to reach the mainland in the winter. That was alright, there was enough of a village here on the island that the castle could sustain itself indefinitely for at least three to four years, but it did make life here somewhat dour. Day in, day out there were only demons and grim-faced men to keep the Jarl Azkaban company._

 _It was one of the sorry facts of his existence._

If only I had never summoned the accursed beasts…

 _His office, an affluent chamber in one of the tallest towers, was filled with books and parchment, ink and quills. Jarl Azkaban was a warrior, a killer, and a cruel man, but he was at least a learned man. Some of the other Lords accused him of being soft, of spending too his time practicing the ways of the shaman, but his sword-arm was just as lethal as it had always been, and he was keen to prove it to them. The last one to challenge him had died easily enough, and there would be more hot-blooded fools who were eager to test his blade in the future._

 _They had no need to know how he had enhanced his own body with the same magic that he had used to conjure his jailers. The damned curse that he had wrought upon this island…it was the very same that hung over his head like the headsman's axe. One day it would claim him, that he knew._

 _He had only just sat down, still flushed with the energy of his earlier achievement in the wards, when the door swung open again, revealing the burly form of his master-at-arms, Ragnar Adolfsson. The man bowed with his arm across his chest, and the beads which were worked skillfully in his full beard swung lightly with the motion._

" _Come, speak," Jarl Azkaban ordered gruffly. Ragnar stepped up to the desk as his liege set aside his parchments, resting one hand upon the dark staff that was leaning innocuously against his seat. The younger man knew better than most the power that his lord wielded in that simple wooden staff, and he shuddered to think of the things that he had seen._

" _Another longboat arrived today, full of Catholic priests and druids," he explained. "I put them the open cells on the second level. A few of the stronger druids gave us some trouble."_

" _How many?" Jarl Azkaban asked, referring to casualties._

 _Ragnar huffed a sigh. "Three of ours," he answered. "Damn moon-worshippers had knives on them."_

" _Those fools on the mainland can't even search a man properly," Jarl Azkaban griped darkly. "Take two of theirs for each of ours, and string them up for the dementors. Let the rest watch."_

" _As you wish," Ragnar replied neutrally. He would certainly delegate the task; it was generally a punishment for the raiders. If you screwed something up, you got to string up the prisoners when you got back to the island._

 _No one liked watching the dementors work._

" _We'll need more jailers," Azkaban muttered, staring darkly at his desk. "And probably another level of the castle. We can dig into the rock below the keep."_

 _Ragnar agreed with him his Jarl that there would be more work for them in this castle, but he didn't envy the man his grisly task. As one of the few men that knew the secrets of the dementors, Ragnar knew exactly what his liege would sacrifice in the coming hours of twilight, only to secure the castle for the prisoners of the belligerent fools on the mainland._

 _What use was gold, when his very soul was doomed? They paid him an equal measure for each warm body that he locked away, for every druid that he ruined, for every priest that he shattered, but years of hard deeds and hard thoughts had worn away at the Jarl's worldly desires._

 _Ragnar was dismissed to make the necessary accommodations for their guests, and Azkaban continued to stew in silence, forgetting his studies of magic and swords-play, of gold and politics. His mind turned towards the work that was set out before him. Gooseflesh raised along his arms, and he gripped tightly the staff beside his desk._

 _Dare he risk utter eradication once more?_

 _It was inevitable that he would, and before he was truly aware of his actions he had risen to his feet and begun the long trek down to the mass grave outside the castle. The place where the emaciated bodies of the damned prisoners of his castle were thrown to fester and rot, the place where dementors lurked in the shadows and cavorted amongst the corpses of their victims. It was an evil place, a deserted place, a place reserved for the dead._

 _But Jarl Azkaban would dare to intrude there. He reached the pit, trying desperately to ignore the stench of rot and the swarms of insects._

 _Wasn't it too cold for insects here? It was too cold for anything else, but the flies and the maggots…they seemed to be constant denizens of this place, no matter the time of year._

 _He drew several of the corpses from the grave, the ones that were mostly bone and papery skin, and he laid them upon the rocks above the roaring sea. There he stood over them, all victims of his prison, with his staff held in his shaking hands._

 _Nothing drove home the enormity of his sin like the gravesite. Nothing ate at him like the smell of rot and the knowledge that he was the one who had damned each of these men to torment at the hands of his own personal host of demons._

 _At first, it had been necessary. It had been a step along the path to power, a rung in the ladder of success. Now he had power and wealth beyond measure, but his soul was stained irrevocably, and he could feel the sickness of it. His body might be strong, his mind keen, but nothing could save him now._

 _He had doomed himself along with the bodies in that grave._

 _Now, it was a matter of inevitability. He would complete this conjuration, as he always did, and more demons would be imprisoned here to act as his jailers. Creatures of sadism and cruelty, like the Jarl himself, they listened to him only because he had forced them to. They would turn on him at a moment's notice, they would tear him down and devour him, along with the village that he had built and the castle that he had warded stone by stone._

 _He knew it. He also knew that they would succeed._

 _The words of the chant came to his lips and dropped from him like stones to splash into the water far below. The words were whipped from his lips by the hissing gales of wind, and his staff began to grow warm in his hands. It was the only warmth that he could feel on the whole of his island, and it felt right._

 _It was a long, tiring process, the summoning of demons. It took a lot of effort to drag them screaming from the abyss, and even more to bind them securely to the mortal plane. Jarl Azkaban accomplished it only with the power of the ley lines that ran beneath his feet; he acted as a conduit for the power of the earth itself. It burned him sometimes, as magic so powerful surged through the familiar channels of his body, but it was a necessary sacrifice._

 _Three more dementors were born that night, each the inhabitant of another mangled corpse. When he was finished, Azkaban stayed where he was, looking out over the sea. He felt empty, drained, and trapped._

What have I done?

 _He almost wanted them to kill him. It would be a just end for the man that he had become, and there was poeticism in it. A legend fit for retelling he would make. The cautionary tale of Jarl Azkaban, the man that unleashed Hell on Earth._

When Catholics speak of demons, they speak of me, _he thought._ I am the father of demons. The conjurer of spirits. A warden of death.

 _They came for him as he stood there, on the cliffs overlooking the sea. He didn't even think to activate the safeguards that he had completed just that evening, didn't even think to fight them. He was one of them. He saw it clearly now…how could he have forgotten?_

 _He had always been one of them._

 _And he fell. Smashed upon the rocks, his body was broken, his blood spilled into the sea, and the castle of Azkaban was lost without so much as a cry of battle. The city was devoured in days, swarmed by the evil which had been unleashed by the Jarl Azkaban himself._

 _His wealth, his deeds, his great army…all were lost with his death. His erasure was so complete that even history forgot him. the island prison might bear his name—Azkaban—but there are none who live that remember him as the Father of Demons._

* * *

He awakened and felt tears burning trails through the dust upon his cheeks. He could feel the pain of his broken bones, the despair and the guilt, the corrupted peace. It writhed in him, a foreign thing, something that he wished he had never felt, something that he wished he could forget.

He saw the runes before him then, in all of their immaculate detail. The perfect, intricate arrays of ancient lettering, it was burned into his memory as if by a brand. He pressed his bony palms against his eyes and groaned, trying to banish it from his sight, but when he closed his eyes he saw it flash there, as if it had been stitched upon the backs of his eyelids.

He didn't want to remember Azkaban, the Father of Demons. He didn't want to think about the one who had created the monsters that would come for him soon, now that he was awake. He wanted to sleep again, wanted to roll over on the stones and feel his heat sapped from his body by the cold, unforgiving earth.

He wanted to forget…

* * *

 _William stood upon the rocky shore, staring out over the deceptively calm sea, at the distant horizon. He wondered if they were out there, the greatest enemies that he had ever faced, waiting for him to attempt a crossing. He wondered if he would survive such an attempt._

" _My lord?" one of his faithful warlocks questioned him, standing beside him, holding his staff firmly in his hand. He was ready to face hell at the command of his king, the conquering Norman lord. William knew this, knew that all of his men would lay themselves down on hot coals for him if he demanded it._

 _He glanced at the man's pale features, saw the lingering fear in his eyes, and knew that he would go to battle against the forces of Hell ins spite of this, because of his king. Because of his oaths. Because of his admirable courage and noble strength._

" _You never cease to amaze me, Wulfric," William told the man sincerely. "I have yet to meet a man with more admirable strength of character. When this is finished, I'll grant you an earldom in the North, a whole swath of rolling hills. Take your staff and settle there, when we are finished."_

 _The man looked surprised. "I would not wish to depart from your service," he answered. "I do not desire a title."_

" _I cannot ask any more from you than this," William replied stolidly. "We will face demons together on this day. In the name of God and Country, we will vanquish them or we will die. How can I then demand more from you? A lesser man would have deserted weeks ago, when we first encountered the shadows."_

 _And indeed, there had been many who_ had _deserted. Men who had tried to make it back South by themselves. William had yet to hear if any of them had survived._

 _He had thought the stories of these dementors to be local folklore or ancient religion. It was a popular story all over the world, the tale of demons bound to flesh, creatures that hunted men in the dark of night to consume their souls. Torturers that dragged children screaming into the depths of their ancient keep on a remote island. Yes, everyone had heard the stories._

 _But what truth was there in these fireside tall tales? Surely God would not have suffered such abominations to exist._

 _In their arrogance, they had been utterly unprepared to face them._

 _They had come upon the troop while they were on the road. A set of six, cloaked in tattered black cloth and flying low above the ground. Under the cover of a thick fog they came, screeching and diving at the mounted men with their arms outstretched. The horses had immediately panicked, upturning wagons and bucking their riders into the mud. Chaos had reigned supreme was warlocks responded with curse and charm, flame and ice, strength and spirit. The demons took twelve of them before they were finally driven off, leaving the broken bodies of their victims in their wake._

 _Not a single one of the foul dementors had been felled by the spells of the company. It didn't seem that the magic of mere mortals could reach them._

 _For weeks they had struggled, suffering daily assaults. William had prayed many times for deliverance, fighting alongside his warlocks as they were picked off one by one. The company's numbers dwindled by desertion or death, from five hundred to two. From two hundred to one._

 _At last, only these remained. Thirty brave, powerful men, twenty of them warlocks, five of them priests. It was the five men-at-arms that William truly admired, for they were helpless against this enemy. There was no blood to spill by blade or spear in this battle, no bones to break or armor to pierce. It was warfare of the soul._

 _The priests had devised a spell that could drive the dementors from them. A charm they claimed was given to them by God Almighty in this, they time of direst need. William didn't care if it had come from a dancing imp or a cheating goblin._

 _It worked. And that was what mattered._

" _The boats are ready, then?"_

" _Yes. The men await your word."_

 _William nodded, following his lieutenant down to the place where the boats were situated upon the rocks. His eyes roved across the worn features of what remained of his company, catching the signs of resignation and desperation. These were men that were at their wit's end. Days of continuous struggle, witnessing death after death, horror after horror…_

 _They had reached a breaking point._

" _It ends today!" William declared, loud enough for all of his faithful subjects to hear. "I swear it. On my very blood, it ends today. No more shall these, the spawn of Lucifer, haunt the lands of our countrymen. Today we take the battle to them. By God almighty, we will eradicate this blight, and each of the men who gave their lives to make this possible shall find their just rewards in Heaven."_

 _A ragged cry was joined, and the men clasped arms together, sharing in that moment a grim comradery that was deep and profound. It was the bond of brothers' battle-forged and tempered. The priests chanted their prayers, and laid their hands on the warlocks and the bladesmen. Then they climbed into the boats and set off, for the legendary island of Azkaban._

 _The haunt of demons._

 _It was a castle like any other. The stony crags and sheer faces of the high cliffs were intimidating enough, framed as they were by churning clouds and the telltale shadows of the dementors who clung to the masonry like insects. the island seemed deathly and unforgiving, but there was a rocky beach there, small as it might have been._

 _The_ patronus _charm protected them as they approached, and it cleared for them a place where they could land the boats. William felt that taking the beach had been much easier than they had any right to expect, and he was proven right in his discomfort when a swarm of the demons rushed down from the castle._

 _The angelic manifestations of magic clashed against them, doing what fire and ice and murderous curses had failed to do. The demons were thrown down upon the rocks, trampled and crushed, diverted and buffeted. Magic swelled and burst through the air, ebbing and flowing as the eddies in the rapids. The stones cracked and scattered, men screamed and groaned, demons screeched and howled._

 _The sky broke and a downpour engulfed them. Lightning flashed like a mirror of the magic flowing above the earth, and the company of thirty continued to push up the sheer rock face, towards the gaping maw of the castle's gate. William led the charge, cutting the air with his staff and blasting the demons back by the sheer force of his magic._

 _His patronus was a hulking bear, larger than any that had ever lived, and it seemed happy enough to bat the dementors around like leaves caught in an autumn storm, crushing them in its silvery jaws and tearing at them with flashing claws. It was joined by Wulfric's swooping eagle, and a varied menagerie of the other warlocks' conjurations, each the product of the Lord's joy._

 _They seized the gate, suffering only a single loss. A man had fallen behind, and the demons had dragged him over the cliffs._

 _The castle was dark, but illuminated in white by the cheerful magic of the invaders. The shadows seemed to flee from the patronus as surely as the demons, and it was in that moment that William realized that they had already won. They were here, at the heart of the infestation, armed with the means to destroy their enemies._

 _But this castle seemed useful enough. There would be prisoners aplenty to fill these halls, and soldiers enough to man the towers. It would have been a shame to cleanse the island utterly, to shatter the walls and bring low this ancient fortress._

" _We must go deeper," he roared over the screeching horrors which clamored at the gate. As always, he led the charge, following the gray stones down, into the bowels of the earth._

 _They fought for what seemed like days before they finally reached what William concluded must have been the central hub for the warding scheme. There was a magical doorway in the walls, one that he opened easily enough through an application of his power, and when the inner workings of the castle were laid bare before him, he realized that he had only to claim the castle as his own for the wards to imprison the demons within. They would be trapped here, on this island, far from the people of England._

" _My lord, destroy them," a priest urged him. "It is God's will."_

" _They will pay for their deeds," William replied, stubbornly determined. "For every man that they killed, they shall languish here for a decade. The demons shall suffer under the command of my kingdom for a thousand, nay,_ ten _thousand years. But never again shall they run free across the countryside. This I swear."_

 _He stepped forward them, into the heart of the wards, and began his work._

* * *

"Wake up."

The voice drew him forcefully from his dreams. He didn't want that. It was better not to be awake. Better to forget.

"Awaken, I said. Or have you forgotten your oath?"

At this, he opened his eyes and raised his head to stare. The dark specter of a man—or not a man, but something more—that he had once known was there, standing before the bars of his cell door, and for a moment a thoughtless anger filled him, but it bled away as swiftly as the rest of his warmth, leaving him empty.

"Who?" he managed to croak, although his throat protested even that single word.

The man approached him, knelt before him, reached out his long-fingered hands and touched him. he recoiled from that touch, for it was too-familiar, much alike the searching hands of his torturers, but he was too slow to escape them. His face was caught between the man's cool hands, and he felt then a sort of reassuring coldness.

It was unlike the cold stone, in that it didn't sap the strength from his bones. It was cool, but it rejuvenated him. Like a mouthful of fresh water.

"My child, it is I."

He remembered. He didn't want to remember. It was better to forget. "No," he murmured, reaching out to grasp fistfuls of the man's cloak. "No."

"My good and faithful servant," the man murmured. His voice was so deep, so full of sorrow and strength. It resonated in the prisoner's chest. "We meet once again at the place between life and death. It is time for your suffering to come to an end; you have not forgotten the oaths you swore to me?"

He _had_ forgotten…it seemed like so long ago. How long? "Please…" he gasped, shaking his head in the man's hands. "I can't…it's over…"

"Ah, but you are no longer the young boy that I knew," Death continued, feeling the meaning of his servant's words. "This place has broken you, as I feared. But I am a god of broken things. I remade you once, and shall remake you again."

The prisoner was lifted up, until he stood close to the cold, powerful figure before him, fists clenched in the dark cloak of his master, face upturned towards the impenetrable eyes of a god. "I'm sorry," he cried, trembling violently as he struggled to keep his balance. "I've failed you…I'm sorry…"

"Shhh," Death quieted him. "Do not be afraid. The visions I have given you will deliver you. Seize the power that you have forgotten and rise up from this tomb, go forth and be known as Sephtis, brother of Death, and my loyal servant."

"I can't," the prisoner whimpered. "I don't…I'm not strong enough…"

"You can," Death replied, pressing his hands against his servant's face. "You _will._ Rise up, I say! Do what William the conqueror failed to do, and eradicate the demons who have so ruined you. Do this in my name, and earn yourself new life."

Death released his hold and stepped back, watching the emaciated form of his servant sway in the sudden absence of touch. A shaky nod followed the lengthy silence.

"Okay," he whispered.

When he opened his eyes, Death was gone, but a new strength had filled him. There, in the depths of Azkaban, the skeletal man knelt upon the stones, forced the remains of his magic into his hands, and began to etch the familiar designs upon the ground.


	28. Part 3 Chapter 1

Part 3 Chapter 1

Michael Corners had worked in Azkaban for most of his adult life. It was not a career that anyone would be proud of, certainly, but it was dependable, and there were few other positions in the magical world suitable for a man of his particular talents. Or rather his _lack_ of talents. With hardly enough magic to earn himself a Hogwarts letter, he hadn't been qualified for warding or curse-breaking. He hadn't been very good at arithmancy, which disqualified him from spell-crafting and enchanting. Runes were always a sore spot for him, which contributed greatly to his absolute incompetency in all matters magical.

There were many things that Michael Corners lacked. Sympathy and common decency were a few examples of the kind, but these deficits proved to be exactly the sort of thing that people looked for when they went hiring for Azkaban guards. All it took to convince him to take the job was decent pay and a guaranteed retirement, which the Ministry was quick to provide to anyone willing to suffer Azkaban prison's horrors willingly.

There was a certain price that was paid by those who spent the majority of their days within the castle's walls. Most people couldn't stand it for more than a few years, which made it almost impossible to keep the prison fully staffed. Michael had seen them come and go. Baby-faced fellows with too much naivety and too little resilience to stand a chance, really. There was another one, a new guy, and it fell to Michael to show him the ropes, as usual.

"Alright," he declared, startling his companion from his reverie. They had been standing at the end of a corridor in the upper level, listening to the conversations of the other guards as they milled around the guardhouse, mumbling about Ministry business and trivial matters that nobody really paid any attention to except for the Warden.

The kid's wide blue eyes stared at him for a moment, and Michael resisted the urge to sneer at the guy. "First thing, we get to feed the inmates. Grab one of those carts and we'll get moving."

Doing as he was told, the young man rolled up his sleeves and pushed the cart over towards Michael, who watched him with a bored expression on his wrinkled face. He explained the workings of the damn cart, how it was connected to the storehouse, how it dispensed the slop into a bowl. Then they began the long, demoralizing trek throughout all four levels of Azkaban prison.

The uppermost levels, one and two, were above ground, and there was just enough of the dusty sunlight peering in through the windows that the castle didn't appear all that unfriendly. Aside from the dementors that swung out into the corridor every once and awhile, sapping the joy and energy out of anyone unfortunate enough to be near to them, it was a rather relaxing walk.

The prisoners here were in various states of degeneration. The upper levels didn't have any serious nutcases, although anyone that suffered under the hands of dementors on a daily basis was bound to be a little unhinged. They wore a variety of tattered robes, these inmates, usually whatever they had been wearing when they were arrested. So long as it wasn't enchanted, criminals basically got tossed into a cell in whatever was on their backs when they arrived.

Robes hung off their emaciated frames like drapery. Some of the prisoners crawled desperately towards the cell door as the new guy slid their bowl through the little slot designed specifically for that purpose. Others cowered away from the sound of the cart. Michael ignored all of them, instructing the unfortunate man on the proper way to provide food to the more dangerous inmates without being pulled against the cell and choked to death.

That had happened last year. Right nasty business on level three.

There was one prisoner on the first level that Michael always found most curious. It was the mass-murderer Sirius Black, a man that everyone expected to be stark-raving mad when they showed up for their first day on the job. Most of them were surprised to find him quite composed, and this rookie was no exception. They reached that cell after taking a left turn in the corridor, following the winding path of the thick stone walls, and the cart clattered to a halt.

Black's eyes opened, dead and gray, but he said nothing. He was sitting cross-legged in the very center of his cell, shirtless. Tattered trousers hung from his bony waist, obviously too large for him, and only the knot tied by the ratty cord around his hips held them above his ankles. Dark tattoos covered his entire body, triangles and semicircles, pentagons and jagged, twisting lines. Once pulsing with power, now dead.

His hair was twisted, long, and shaggy. It hung down to his shoulders where it flayed and scattered in a horrendous manner, tangling hopelessly with the mass of graying hair that hung from his neck and jaw. His beard was bushy and thick, streaked with white, and the only visible portions of his pale face were his sunken eyes and his hooked nose.

The young man pushing the cart hesitated. "Go on," Michael told him, gesturing at the cell.

The man leaned down and slid the bowl through the bars. The empty bowl from yesterday was there already, and it was retrieved in the same motion.

Black stood and stepped towards the door in a single lithe action, making no sound as he retrieved the bowl and glared at them, watching each and every one of their movements as they shuffled further on down the corridor.

Once they had walked a good distance, past another twelve or thirteen cells, the rookie paused. "That was Sirius Black," he said, as if it had only just dawned upon him.

"Aye," Michael replied. He gestured to the withering, pathetic creature that was crouched beside the cell. "Go on. Careful of this one. Damn hag doesn't know when to quit…"

As usual, the impudent young man didn't listen, still thinking over his encounter with the infamous criminal. As he bent to slide the bowl through the bars, the woman lurched forward and seized his neck through the wrought iron, dragging him forward and slamming his head into the grate. The sound of ringing metal reverberated down the corridor, and she heaved as if to have another crack at it, but Michael was there.

He was against the bars with that same bored expression on his face, grabbing the painfully thin woman by her spidery gray hair. Just as she drew the rookie in to bang his skull on the bars, Michael snapped her head against the metal in the same manner, except with the full strength of a healthy adult man. Needless to say, his action was more effective than hers.

Something crunched in the impact, and she released the new guy, who fell back against the cart, choking on air and groaning in pain. Michael watched the glistening blood dripping from the woman's nose for a moment, standing close to the bars in a silent dare.

 _Try it._

"Curse you," she hissed, crouching over her spilled meal. her fingers sought out the soaked stones of her cell, scooping dumplings and something that might have been meat at some point, now mixed with grime and unmentionable filth, into her hands. All was deposited back into her bowl as she scuttled back to the parasite-infested bedroll.

Michael drew the rookie up, put his hands back on the cart. "Be more careful," he admonished. "These people didn't get thrown in here for selling roses in Hogsmeade."

The man nodded, shakily, and they continued on and on. Down they went, to level two. It was darker, fouler, and more oppressive here. And it was here that they came across an unfortunately common spectacle.

The prisoner was standing at the stone wall with his fingers splayed across the cold, unforgiving rock. Michael knew what was about to happen—he'd seen it before—but he didn't look away. It didn't matter to him. Nothing mattered.

The inmate glanced at them, staring with empty eyes. He was already dead, it seemed. What happened next was just reiterating the fact. With a suddenly violent motion, something that might have seemed impossible from such a frail, tortured creature, the man crushed his skull against the stone.

"Merlin!" the rookie exclaimed, reeling away from the sickening sound of splintering bone. Bright, arterial blood sprayed across the wall as the inmate slumped forward, unconscious and dying swiftly. At once, a dementor swept through the bars of the cell, seeming incorporeal as it hung low over the bleeding man's ruined face, turning it up gently so the graying light of the sun could illuminate it fully.

Michael shook his head. Dementors loved this the most, the moment of death. It was their ultimate goal, he knew. He had been here long enough that he was quite familiar with the dementors, almost fond of them in many ways, and he had seen this sort of behavior out of them before.

They craved the exquisite pleasures of a man's dying terror, of his mortal agony, of final despair. This dementor held the ruined face of the prisoner intimately between its hands and shuddered in orgiastic pleasure as the man's blood poured out onto the stones from the great dent in his skull, from the gaping crack in bone which had been weakened by malnutrition.

Michael pushed the stricken rookie and the cart to the next cell. He would come back later to deal with the corpse…

At the end of the day, they were back in the guardhouse, and Michael pulled out his cigar, lighting it up in the cramped common area as he sat down at the knotted oak table. The other man fell, trembling, into a seat opposite him, looking ten years older than he had looked just this morning. There was little light in his eyes now.

"What do you think?"

The man's eyes focused on him, only to slip away to gaze at the wall. "What do I think?" he whispered, almost as if he didn't understand. He repeated it louder. "What do I think?"

Michael raised one bushy white eyebrow.

"I think that you're a heartless bastard," the younger man hissed. "I think that we'll all burn in Hell for the things that we've allowed to happen in this castle. I think…"

His tirade was cut off quite suddenly by a shudder that ran through the very stones under their feet. The other guards, all tired and pale, drained and weary, froze in the midst of their conversations. The strange phenomenon died as soon as it began.

The door to the Warden's office banged open. "Alright, who was it?" he barked, turning his thunderous expression upon the uncomprehending guards. "Which one of you dimwits tampered with the wards? Do you think this is a _joke_?"

They heard it then, a great screeching cry. It echoed up from beneath their feet, swelled around them like a gust of wind, hummed and buzzed in the hollows of their skulls, and then swept through the slitted windows of the castle as if it had never been. It crawled up from the winding staircases, a terrible cacophony that pounded in their heads like hammers, and for a moment no one could do anything but cringe against the noise.

"The lower levels!" the Warden shouted over the din. The guards stared at him blankly. "Come on, you idiots!"

The man grabbed the nearest guard and practically threw him towards the stairs. This brought the rest of them to their feet, and they swarmed out of the guardhouse in a disorderly charge, heading towards the source of the hellish choir which was beginning to shake the stones of the castle. Some of them grabbed torches from the walls, but others simply conjured lights with their wands and tried to keep up with the mad rush.

The moist depths of the lowest level were the epicenter of the noise, and the moment the guards poured out into the tight square atrium, absolute silence settled over the castle. Michael was pressed in the middle of the crowd, but he pushed his way to the front and led the way down the right-hand passage, towards the place that he knew was the heart of Azkaban's wards.

There were not many people that knew of the secret chamber. The Warden, of course, and a few of the oldest veterans of the guards. It was to this chamber that they went, a crowd of confused, terrified men, and when they reached it, they saw something that boggled the mind.

Michael froze at the threshold to the warding chamber, stared out over the assembled horde of dementors, and felt in that moment that he would die. Laying his eyes upon this unholy host should have been enough to strip his soul from his body, but instead it only rendered him paralyzed by fear.

And there, at the head of the writhing mass, a single man stood, frozen like a statue, wreathed in white magic, clothed in a thick black cloak which hung motionless from his shoulders even as his magic whipped around him in a cyclone. The guards trembled at the spectacle, and even the Warden held his tongue as he watched what was sure to be the death of this intrepid inmate.

For a moment, even Michael felt the plight of the haggard man that stood there, unbalanced by an old injury, before impossible odds. Then he heard the man speak.

"I have come to set right a terrible wrong," he intoned. His voice was dry like grinding rocks, but it pulsed outward from him in waves and manifested in the vibrations of the gut. It was like listening to an avalanche speaking English. "I have come to do what William the Conqueror failed to do a thousand years ago, when he stood upon these very stones."

The dementors hissed and screeched, flexing and pulling as a mass until one of their number was pushed to the forefront. It was one of the larger ones, a powerful example of his kind, and he hung suspended in the light of the prisoner's magic. "Who are you?"

None of the guards had ever heard a dementor speak, and the sound took the breath from their lungs and replaced it with ice.

"I am Sephtis," was the immediate reply. "I have claimed the wards of this castle. I have trapped you and your accursed brethren here, in this chamber. Soon, it will be finished."

"It would be a favor to us, for you to release us from these mortal prisons of flesh," the dementor hissed.

Sephtis stepped forward, and the dementors screeched as they recoiled from him. His magic swelled and crawled across the stones in white tendrils. Michael was shaking with the amount of power that was at evidence here, he could feel it in the earth and in the air. The guards behind him murmured quietly to each other, drawing back.

"Then why are you afraid?" Sephtis asked the demon rhetorically. "Ah. It is because you know that I am not here to free you. I am here to destroy you."

The dementor laughed, and was joined by a chorus of breathy cackles. "I built this castle, I carved these runes. They cannot destroy us, little mage," it rasped. "Nothing can destroy us."

" _I can_ ," Sephtis replied. "Come forth and die."

The dementors responded to this challenge as might be expected. The host of them swelled up, as if pressing against an invisible dam, and finally surged forward in a wave of leathery skin and flapping black robes. The sound of their terrible screeching rose to a frenzied pitch now, forcing the guards to their knees. Michael's eyes watered as he stared, unbelieving, at the white magic that began to pulse around the darkly clad prisoner.

Sephtis. That was his name. Michael would never forget that name.

The dementors broke over his dome of magic like water upon a rock, but they were burned by it as well. flames crawled across their clothing, and Sephtis raised his hands after a moment, surrounded entirely by the chattering forms of his enemies. Then his magic exploded from him in a thin blade, cutting in all directions. It plucked the swarm from the air and threw them down against the stones, where they writhed and howled at the magic that had cut them. Black ichor and acrid smoke spilled from the wounds on their unnatural bodies.

Sephtis pressed his hands together and the castle's stones glowed briefly red as power surged through them, running along the ground and into the prisoner's feet.

 _He's siphoning from the wards,_ Michael realized. He hadn't known that such a thing was possible.

The white magic swelled again, reaching out its tendrils to choke the life from the dementors that still sought to bring down their executioner. The clawed across teh stones, reaching for him even as the flesh was stripped from their bones. The prisoner seemed to tower above them, majestic, as they burned, screeching like the victims that they had so abused for centuries, twisting as their forms were stripped from them.

The mass of smoky spirits had gathered above the prisoner, and for a moment Michael thought that it was done. He couldn't believe what he had witnessed.

But then a flickering, orange flame grew in the air around Sephtis, growing in intensity with every breath. After a moment, it swept around and took the form of a vicious, winged snake. Jaws wide, it curled up into the air and swallowed up the unnatural black smoke.

For a moment, the spectacle froze. In fact, time itself seemed to hesitate, as if the whole universe had gasped at the audacity of this wizard's actions. The flames didn't move, didn't dance. There was no sound at all, and the air hung deathly still in the chamber.

Then the runes pulsed along the walls and ceilings, illuminating a maze of intricate patterns, carved in six different languages over the course of a thousand years. A pulse reverberated beneath their feet as the precursor to the shockwave that blasted outward from the fiery conjuration, and Michael trembled as the furious air rushed over his body. It snuffed the torches, scattered the remains of the dementor's clothes, and seemed to take with it the very air that was breathed by the shaken guards of Azkaban.

Utter blackness consumed them. Then, a gentle light revealed Sephtis to them. He was standing at the top of the stairs, facing all sixty-odd guards silently, but no one even thought about drawing their wands upon him. They had just witnessed the impossible, and their absolute shock was enough to stay their hands. That and crippling fear of the incredible power that they had seen.

"This island is now mine," the man declared. He might have looked young if it were not for the gaunt, skeletal nature of his face and the dark beginnings of a beard that was clinging to his jaw. He had bright, piercing green eyes, and his black hair hung in a tangled mess around his face.

He was thin, tall, and sharp. But there was a palpable power to him that manifested in a subtle itch under the skin. A buzz at the back of the skull. It made Michael want to back far away, curl into a ball, and close his eyes against the sight.

"Return to the ministry and tell them that Sephtis has claimed Azkaban for his own."

The Warden came forward then, inclining his head nervously and looking for the right words. "What about the prisoners?"

"I will handle the prisoners. They are no longer your concern," Sephtis told the man sharply. "Depart from this place. You have four hours before the wards will eject you."

And with a slight twist, Sephtis was gone. Not even the distinct _crack_ of apparition marked his departure, only the gentle swirl of dust upon the stone.

* * *

A/N: Welcome to Part 3! The final section of the story begins here. I wanted to clear up a few small things,

First, _Sephtis is Harry Potter_. It will become even clearer in the next chapter, but I thought that it was fairly straightforward in the interlude, so I just wanted to clear up any confusion definitively.

Second, there were a few people that seemed to question the fact that Sephtis wasn't incredibly angry at El for allowing him to be thrown into Azkaban in the first place. Well, there are a few things that you might not have noticed when you read through part 2. El did prepare Sephtis for Azkaban by teaching him wandless magic, runes, and the mind arts. The difference between Harry's failure and Sephtis' success is that Sephtis called upon El's power and Harry thought to achieve victory alone. The second reason that Sephtis isn't angry is that he hardly even remembers his life as Harry Potter. The interlude established how thoroughly he was ruined by the dementors. So Sephtis is not angry primarily because he didn't feel abandoned but also because his life as Harry Potter is more like a dream to him than personal experience.

And that's that. I also wanted to offer my thanks for the support this story has seen so far, but I won't get all sappy on you. I hope you continue to enjoy my work.


	29. Part 3 Chapter 2

Part 3 Chapter 2

After the rather disconcerting events of the late evening, Sirius Black heard nothing. The castle was swallowed up by absolute silence, and it seemed that even the prisoners, wretched though they were, remained quiet in the aftermath. There had been a tremendous boom, a shudder of the stones, and an uproar from the lower levels of an unprecedented kind. Then nothing.

Even the dementors had ceased in their incessant harassment once the sun had fallen. There were no guards patrolling the corridors in the dead of night, walking with the distinctive clipped footsteps of boots upon smooth stone. The occasional voice filtered to him from one of the adjacent cells, but he had no desire to speculate uselessly like the others.

He didn't allow himself to hope. One night without a visit from the dementors did not a freeman make.

When the sun began to peek through the slitted window of his cell, Sirius heard the familiar clatter of the cart coming down the corridor, and the sound of voices as a guard conversed with the prisoners. More curiously, he heard the sound of cell doors opening and closing, and that was something that aroused his interest.

The guards never opened the cells. _Never._ Unless, of course, it was to throw someone there to die. _  
_

When the cart scuttled to a halt before his cell, Sirius opened his eyes and saw the man who drove it, but it was not a guard as he had been expecting. It was a tall, gaunt figure dressed in a dark tunic and trousers with a flowing cloak that settled neatly over his shoulders. The high collar of the cloak and the silver, skeletal fingers that held the fabric at the hollow of his neck gave the man a somber appearance, and his exceedingly sharp features belied an uncanny intelligence and severity of manner that drew Sirius immediately to his feet for the first time in many hours.

"Sirius Black," the man spoke in a quiet, indomitable voice, regarding the prisoner with cutting emerald eyes. Eyes that Sirius found disturbingly familiar…

He said nothing, and waited. He had not spoken much at all since his imprisonment here; there was no reason for him to speak. No one would hear him even if he did. The man seemed to accept this after a moment, for he, too, had the demeanor of one that was accustomed to solitude. He ladled food into a bowl and passed it into the cell.

"I reviewed the records of this... _prison_ , and found no mention of the charges laid against you. There was no court date and no presiding judge listed in your file," the man told him. "I am inclined to release you, but I feel that it is necessary for me to clear up a few essential facts regarding your case. The other prisoners knew of you, even though I did not. So, tell me about the events leading to your imprisonment."

Sirius blinked as he took the warm bowl between his hands.

 _Warm? The food was never warm in Azkaban…_

Glancing at the contents of the bowl, he found that it appeared much more palatable now than it had been just yesterday. The broth was not a clouded gray, and the other ingredients were recognizable for what they were. It appeared as though someone had put together potatoes, chicken, peas, and carrots. The broth was mostly clear, but the aroma of the stew was inviting and healthy. In short, it was the absolute opposite of the things that Sirius had become accustomed to eating.

"Who are you?" he asked. His voice was soft, and the words felt unfamiliar to him as a result of his prolonged silence.

The man did not rebuke him for responding with a question rather than an answer. Rather, he only continued ladling a healthy serving of the stew, providing the meal to the inmate across from Sirius before he returned his attention to Black.

"My name is Sephtis. I was a prisoner here, as you are now, until I was called to set right the terrible wrongs that have been committed in the walls of this castle. I have claimed the wicked legacy of Jarl Azkaban, and whether by my life or my death, I shall account for his crimes. The island is mine, now; I have driven the Ministry from it," the man explained.

"What about the dementors?"

"Destroyed," was the hard response. "To the very last, they were consumed by fire, as they deserved."

Sirius didn't know if he believed this man, really. It seemed impossible. Regardless, when he tasted the food that he had been given, he decided that anyone who brought with him soup as good as this was alright in his book. He had almost finished the bowl when he remembered he was supposed to be explaining himself. "You might know that I was supposed to be the Secret-Keeper for the Potter family towards the end of the war with Voldemort. I was blamed for their deaths, and the death of Peter Pettigrew."

"Yes. But you were neither tried nor convicted of those crimes," Sephtis replied. "You are not alone in this prison. There are at least forty-seven prisoners here who were never given a trial. Many of them have accepted my offer of freedom."

"There was no trial. The administration figured that the case was clear enough, and they tossed me here summarily on the night of my arrest. In the war, we set aside the niceties of due process," Sirius explained. "But, I solemnly swear to you that I was not the secret keeper. If I had been given a trial, the truth would have come out; I do not know why they never reviewed my case once the war was finished. Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters. It was why I went after him that night, and it was why he framed me for the murders of those muggles in that gas main explosion."

Sephtis narrowed his eyes briefly, and nodded his head slowly. "You do not lie," he observed. Sirius wondered how the man could tell, although he was relived that someone at last believed his claim of innocence. "Very well."

With a wave of his hand, the cell door clattered noisily open. Sirius froze with his bowl halfway to his lips, watching as the wrought iron bars began to wither and rust before his eyes, fading away until there was nothing between him and freedom.

He blinked his eyes, hard.

"If you wish, you may attempt to make your way to the mainland. I anticipate some resistance from the Ministry in the near future," Sephtis explained. "I would recommend that you stay here, in the castle. There is much work to be done. A man of your talents and resources would find himself very well appreciated here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean to rebuild this fiefdom as it once was a thousand years ago. There was a village here, east of the castle. Fertile ground rests upon these rocky bluffs, and the remains of the houses that were built still lie there, undisturbed, with the corpses of those who were claimed by the dementors when Jarl Azkaban lost control of his creations," Sephtis explained. "My own inheritance was likely seized by the Ministry when I was sentenced to life imprisonment here. What remains of my family's wealth will have fallen into the hands of the miscreants who preside in the Wizengamot."

Sirius barked a laugh. "What family? You never gave me your surname."

"My name was given to me along with the power to claim the title of Azkaban. I was once called Harry Potter, however, and the Potter inheritance is what would have been claimed."

Sephtis' explanation fell on deaf ears. The bowl in Sirius' hands, now empty, clattered to the floor as his hands began to shake, and his eyes focused intently on the man before him with new purpose. Yes, he could see it…there were few resemblances between this man and James Potter, but his eyes smacked of Lily Evans.

They were brighter, harder, and sharper than hers had ever been. She had always had such kind features. Sephtis' visage could not have been called kind in any circumstances, but certainly not dust-streaked and framed by his matted hair as it currently was.

"Harry?" Sirius breathed.

Sephtis nodded hesitantly. "Once, that was my name."

"I was your godfather," Sirius murmured, stepping forward slowly, almost afraid to break the silence. "Your father put you in my arms when you were born. You called me Padfoo'."

"I do not remember," Sephtis replied quietly. "Azkaban has treated be poorly. If it were not for the grace of my master, I would still be drooling in the dust far beneath our feet, in the lowest levels of the prison."

Sirius staggered as if he had been struck. "How did you end up _here_? And so far down…"

"I have many prisoners to meet, and there are those that will go hungry if I do not reach them," Sephtis deflected the question. "If you decide to stay, I would appreciate your assistance. The other prisoners that I have released are claiming what remains of the guardhouse; go there and take charge. You are the most lucid of the men that I have found so far, and they will listen to you."

Sirius nodded immediately. "I'll stay," he replied instantly. "Is there anything in specific that needs doing?"

"At the moment, I am only addressing the issues that have been left to me by the Ministry. Logistics. I intend to gather many of the prisoners in the courtyard this afternoon; I may need your help organizing the undertaking."

"Alright," Sirius replied as he thought about the issues that would lay before them. "When are we expecting company from the Ministry?"

"They will come later today. Or tomorrow, if it takes that long for them to muster a force of aurors."

Grimly, Sirius set his jaw and stepped out into the corridor. "We'd better prepare for them, then, if you intend to hold the castle. They will bring aurors."

"Leave the defenses to me, Sirius. Tend to the freemen that work in the guardhouse."

Sephtis turned his back to his godfather, and addressed the other prisoner. Sirius watched how the young man took charge of the conversation, and for a moment he wondered how old Harry was, and how long he had spent in this prison.

So deep…Sirius shuddered to think of the things that lurked in the darkest depths of Azkaban. He wondered how anyone could have recovered from it.

Looking at the gaunt man, Sirius had to wonder if Sephtis really _had_ recovered at all.

Eventually, he left the darkly clad fellow to his rounds, taking charge as he had been told to do. There were things to be organized, mostly regarding the logistical undertaking of a change in leadership. There were no suitable accommodations for the long term, so chairs and bedding had to be set out in the largest rooms of the guardhouse. No one had any wands, and that made the matter more complicated.

There was a sense of renewed life in the people that bustled around in this, the only clean part of the castle. They were dressed in tattered rags, and their bodies ached and protested every motion, but they continued to work simply because they _could._ When they ran out of things to carry and organize, they sought for more. A few of the more enterprising men took inventory of the storehouses at the northeast and northwest sides of the castle walls, and their results were grim.

It seemed that the ministry guards had taken whatever they could carry with them when they left.

Sephtis continued to send prisoners up to the guardhouse, and Sirius sorted them out. Some of them were so decrepit that they could do nothing but sit against the wall and sip at water from the dirty pewter bowls that remained in the storehouse. A good portion of them refused to speak at all.

But even these sat with a peaceful expression on their face. There was hardship in store for them, but their helpless suffering seemed to be at an end, and that was enough to dispel the despair that had driven many of the prisoners to suicide.

When Sephtis returned with his cart, stacked high with dirty bowls, he distributed what remained of the soup and as a group the men set about washing the bowls.

The water in the kitchens was brackish and coarse. Sirius rigged up a few of the ovens to boil water, and one of the quieter prisoners set up a makeshift fume hood to trap the vapors. This they allowed them to distill drinkable water, and they shared it equally among those that had been released.

It was probably around noon by the time Sephtis gathered everyone in the largest chamber of the guardhouse. Sirius cast his eyes across the assembled crowd of emaciated, skeletal figures, and he winced at the sorry spectacle that they presented. Men with sunken eyes and taut skin gazed at Sephtis with unmasked reverence, watching him as he drew up a chair and sat down comfortably before them. He adjusted his bad leg calmly, and it seemed almost to raise his esteem in the eyes of these former inmates, now that they saw his disability.

Even so restricted, he had rescued them.

"All of you were freed from your cells because I saw that there was no legal charge against you. Or, in the case of some, I found the punishment disproportionate to the crime. I know that those of you who were petty criminals in your past life will have no reason to resort to such behavior now that we are free."

"Free?" someone called. An especially pale man shouldered forward. His face was clear of the gratitude that was so blatant in the others, replaced by a cynical, despairing expression. "None of us know what's going on. The Ministry will come back soon enough, surely?"

"I dismissed them from this castle," Sephtis replied coolly. "They had their chance to preside justly over the island of Azkaban, and they retained foul demons as gaolers and abused the prisoners here so despicably that many of us will never recover. They will never again claim this island, so long as I live."

"They'll kill you," the man asserted despairingly. "What could you do against them?"

"The wards of this castle are bound to me," Sephtis replied. As he leaned back in his chair, there was a weary expression on his face. "While I am on this island, there is nothing that they can do to harm me. Or anyone under my protection, for that matter."

The man looked skeptical, and Sirius shared that sentiment. He had never heard of wards that powerful. Even the wards of Hogwarts did not grant the Headmaster such strength. Sephtis sighed and stood abruptly, favoring his left leg as he swept out his arms.

"Behold," he declared. "The magic of Azkaban!"

A shudder ran through the castle as red light crawled across the rock, surging up the darkly clad legs of the gaunt figure who stood before them. Suddenly, fire curled around his body, furious and hot. It writhed and pulsed, taking the shape of a hulking giant, and when Sephtis raised his arms, his avatar of flame moved with him. The magic was dispelled shortly, and there was only a man where a monster had stood.

No one spoke. At long last, Sephtis dropped his arms and seated himself once again. "The supplies of this island do not allow us to retain all four hundred prisoners within the castle. There are many of them that I have set aside for execution. These are men who committed heinous crimes, or those who have been so ruined by the dementors that death will be a mercy for them. As for those who remain, I will hand over to the Ministry."

"When they refuse to take them?" the man muttered darkly, glossing over the fact that a single man had just volunteered to play executioner.

Sirius could hardly believe that Sephtis would really go through with it. He didn't necessarily disagree with the decision…but it was one thing to say that a man should be killed, and quite another to pick up a wand and do the deed.

Sephtis continued explaining things patiently, without raising his voice. "Then they will be freed as well. Whatever crimes they might have committed can be redeemed through their efforts here on this island," Sephtis replied easily.

A soft murmur went through the crowd, but Sirius could see that they did not resent this idea. Some of the people here were criminals, even though the majority were political prisoners.

"And what goal is that?"

Sephtis regarded this most vocal fellow calmly. "What is your name?"

"It's Jon Smith."

"Jon," Sephtis pronounced clearly. "I have been given a dream. It might seem an impossible thing to you now, but remember that your freedom, also, was an impossible ideal just yesterday, before the dementors were destroyed by my hand. I obliterated them because they were a blight upon this world. It was the right thing to do. Now, I hope to restore life to this castle and the village beside it. A thousand years of evil stain these stones and these shores, but today we can make the decision that the next thousand years will be good. The island will become a sanctuary rather than a prison. That is my goal, Jon Smith."

The whole room seemed to hold its breath. After a moment, Sephtis stood, a line of tension across his shoulders. His eyes flashed. "We have visitors," he declared. A wave of his hand summoned a roll of parchment, and he held it out to Sirius. "Bring me all the prisoners whose names are written there. They should already be chained."

Sirius accepted the parchment and watched as Sephtis swept from the room. Everyone's eyes followed him, and it was only when the sounds of his retreating steps faded to silence that Sirius cleared his throat.

"Better get to it…" he muttered, feeling somewhat sick already at the thought of what was about to happen.

* * *

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore sat at the stern of the large ferry, under the harsh yellow glare of the lantern which rattled and swung above the point of his gray hat. Behind him, there were thirty witches and wizards, wearing the crimson robes of British aurors, and all of them regarded the approaching horizon with a sense of foreboding.

Minister Fudge and his Senior Undersecretary were standing at Dumbledore's shoulders, with their eyes set upon the imposing silhouette of Azkaban. The former Warden and his guards had poured into the Ministry in the latest hours of the day, raising the alarm all across the nation. It had only taken a few hours for the Prophet to report the capitulation of Azkaban's guard, and the stories that they told about the events surrounding it grew taller with every reprinting.

Three special editions in less than twenty-four hours...Albus had never seen such a flurry of activity from them before, not since Harry Potter's imprisonment.

None of the men who had fled the castle would return. They all resigned on the spot, and a few of them had broken their own wands when it seemed apparent that they would be dragged forcibly along for the ride. As things stood, there were precious few members of the current entourage who had any idea of the things that had taken place the night before, but the stories…they were enough to set anyone on edge.

A single man, wielding purifying fire against the horde of dementors. A man named Sephtis, a solitary figure, had driven the whole guard from the prison and, ostensibly, destroyed all of the Dark creatures that defended its chambers.

Dumbledore had taken the time to research the name when he had heard the news. It had been harder for him to sleep recently, partly because of the curse that continued to travel along his arm, and partly because of his steadily worsening prospects. There were no prisoners called Sephtis in the prison, that much he knew.

It had been two years and four months since Harry Potter had stood trial before the Wizengamot. A lot of things had happened in that time, but the most important events surrounded the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort and the start of the war. A war that was swiftly proving to be shorter and far more conclusive than the last.

So far, there had only been a few skirmishes, but these were enough to decide the outcome. The Ministry refused to call it a proper war, and Albus knew then that the war was over. It would just take some time for the death throes of magical Britain to subside. The Dark Lord seemed content to allow the Ministry to bleed out slowly, for he knew that there was not enough gold in their coffers to sustain an army capable of standing up to him. Not to mention the fact that there was no one willing to take up arms.

Dumbledore didn't know how Voldemort had managed it, but he had somehow amassed a capable force of foreign witches and wizards, all loyal to his cause or his gold. He was amassing his forces in southern England, and it was only a matter of time before the hammer fell. Until then, the Ministry would continue to bury its head in the sand and ignore the poison festering at its heart.

Voldemort's rather public return had taken place at Diagon Alley. It hadn't been a bloody affair, as most people would have expected. He had shown himself at the gates of the Ministry, declared his intentions publicly, weaved the sign of his followers in the sky, and departed. A sizable faction of the population backed him immediately, withdrawing from the Ministry's jurisdiction and pledging their resources to the Dark Lord.

That faction just happened to be the same group that controlled the majority of the money in Britain. That was the first blow, and it was a lethal one. It hadn't been violence or politics that had made the final stroke, but economics. The very arteries of the British Ministry-gold-had been severed. The fact that Voldemort was actually taking the time to secure a legitimate regime instead of his trademark terrorist tactics from the last war told Dumbledore exactly who had the advantage in the coming conflict.

Only the losing side was forced to employ guerrilla tactics.

Dumbledore had watched these events unfold with the detached air of a dying man. Harry had been right, of course, when he had said that Dumbledore would realize his mistake far too late to correct it. And he had also been right in saying that it would destroy him. It just hadn't been _that_ mistake that ultimately ruined the greatest wizard to ever live, or even a single mistake. Rather, it was a hundred years of little things, of the smallest missteps, that ultimately led to this moment.

He ran his thumb over the dully colored ring which clung to his withered hand like a leech, and tried to remember the voice of his sister. It had been so long…

"We'd better be on our guard," Cornelius declared. It was a useless statement, but Dumbledore agreed with it anyway. The ferry was about to reach its destination.

They ran up on the rocky beach at the foot of the sheer cliff face, and everyone disembarked slowly. Gathered together at the foot of the winding stair which had been chiseled into the black rock, they must have looked rather unimpressive.

Amelia Bones and her aide, Kingsley Shacklebolt, came to the front of the assemblage to stand beside Dumbledore and the Minister. "We'll be very exposed during the climb," Shacklebolt informed them. "The aurors will lead the way. We'll use shield charms as cover and leap-frog along the stair."

It was a sound strategy, and Dumbledore agreed to lead the first team. He held the elder wand in his good hand, clutching at his robes with the withering muscles of his left, and began the dreary ascent. Seven of the aurors formed up behind him, murmuring charms to break the force of the wind and to warm their extremities.

A dreadful gale fell down from the cliffs and chilled them to the bone even through their thick robes. With a warming charm, it wasn't seriously uncomfortable, but the wind didn't cease to howl above them for even a moment. The sky above was knotted with thick, dark clouds, and the battlements of the castle stared down at the intrepid invaders with dark and empty windows. Like the vacant sockets of a skull.

The gatehouse of Azkaban yawned before them. A few stones were missing from the arch, giving it a jagged, toothy appearance, and the whole of the group hesitated before the dark entrance. The tunnel led through to a courtyard, where a set of thick oak doors barred entry into the guardhouse. From there, all the walls and battlements of the castle were accessible. The dungeons were below their feet at this very moment, expansive and dark.

Dumbledore sighed and walked through the gate.

It opened up into a courtyard, where he was met by Harry Potter.

Dumbledore stopped, and the rest of his company came up to his shoulders, raising their wands towards the solitary figure who stood before them, hands hanging loosely at his sides. He was wearing that conspicuous cloak, and a sharp black shirt. His emerald eyes danced across the forces arrayed against him, but he did not visibly react.

"Welcome to Azkaban," he spoke, and it was not the voice that Dumbledore remembered. It was the same mouth, but whatever inflections there had been to define Harry Potter were gone. Replaced by this, a man tempered in the crucible of Azkaban's depths. "My name is Sephtis. I am glad that you have come; it will allow us to engage in negotiations."

The Minister, who stood between the Chief Warlock and the Head of the DMLE, took this opportunity to speak. "There will be no negotiations, Mr. Potter. Surrender unconditionally and you might live to regret your jailbreak."

"What will you do? Throw me back into a cell? That does not frighten me, Minister. Your pet demons are gone, never to return, and an empty cell is a mercy in comparison to the tortures that I have suffered," Harry replied. "Regardless, I will not surrender to you. Or to anyone. The Wizengamot controlled this castle for a thousand years, and committed such egregious crimes that I would rather destroy the island entirely rather than allow it to fall back into your hands."

The aurors shifted concernedly, and the Minister's face darkened. It was Amelia who spoke. "What have you done with the prisoners?"

For a moment, Sephtis said nothing. But then he raised his hand and the air shimmered briefly like curtains falling to the ground. A line of prisoners was chained together, kneeling upon the roughened earth of the courtyard. They gazed at the aurors who had shifted their aim towards the crowd, and for a moment it didn't register just who, exactly, these people were. Dumbledore recognized Bellatrix Lestrange and realized immediately.

"These are the prisoners that were sentenced to life imprisonment," Harry intoned. "And those who have been broken by your jailers. The death penalty would have been a kinder fate. And so…"

He raised his hand again, and the chains that bound the prisoners came alive. They crawled along the gaunt forms of the prisoners, wrapped around the delicate stalks of their emaciated spines, and with a cacophony of sickening cracks, the prisoners collapsed, lifeless.

"I have done what you could not bring yourselves to do," Sephtis intoned. "Just as I destroyed the demons inhabiting this castle, I have destroyed these men and women. It is far too little, far too late, but it is the beginning of something greater."

No one seemed capable of speech in the face of the brutal execution of at least twenty people. It had happened so swiftly that Dumbledore hadn't even had a chance to protest…

"Harry, what has happened to you?" he implored quietly, turning anguished eyes to the tall, severe visage of the man that had once been his greatest hope.

"I was Harry Potter once, but the dementors and fear did to him what Voldemort had failed to do. I am all that remains. I am Sephtis, and I answer to a higher power than you, Chief Warlock," was the stony response. "There are other prisoners here, people that have committed crimes and paid for them. You will take them with you, when you leave this place."

"We won't be leaving," the minister declared immediately, all bravado. "This island is a direct fief of the Wizengamot. It has been since the founding of the Wizengamot by William the Conqueror."

"I have done what William could not: I have destroyed the demons that have plagued this island since the invasion of the Danes. Furthermore, the wards of the island have been anchored to my flesh; no one can wrest control of them from me while I still live," Sephtis intoned.

At once, Delores Umbridge stepped forward. before Albus could so much as utter an objection, she bellowed, "Then _die!"_

Her wand, along with a good number of others, unleashed lethal curses. The aurors who cast along with her resorted mostly to body-binds and stunners, but there were a few bone-breakers mixed in among them, and Umbridge's spell was a powerful cutter. If it had struck him, Sephtis would have been cleaved in twain lengthwise.

A wall of blinding white magic surged up from the earth and swallowed the incoming spells. The Senior Undersecretary made as if to cast again, but a spear of hard light detached from the shield and ran her through the chest before she could speak the incantation. She staggered back, and blood poured onto the ground in a deluge from the wide hole that had been bored straight through her ribcage, from front to back.

Dumbledore raised a shield and shook the ground with tremendous force, holding his position as the aurors spread out and began to pour their magic into the defenses of the man who had stood toe to toe with a host of dementors and emerged unscathed.

He weathered it all as if it were nothing more than a gentle rain. His eyes were fixed on Dumbledore.

Sephtis reminded the old man in that moment of another incredibly powerful man, a man whose name had gone down in infamy after his exploits in the greatest war mankind had ever seen. A man who had held all of the magical world in his iron grip for three years while Adolf Hitler and his armies swept across Europe.

Grindelwald had wielded power like this. But, as Dumbledore was about to demonstrate, there was a reason that Gellert had eventually failed.

The length of ebony wood hummed in Dumbledore's hand as he settled into his warrior's stance. It had been a long time, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable as he squared off against this much younger opponent. Watching the way Sephtis' magic was broiling in the air around him, seizing incoming spells like the snapping jaws of a crocodile, Dumbledore felt a sense of foreboding that he hadn't experienced since the days of his impetuous youth.

Albus summoned his own considerable power, magic that had long gone unused, and it responded eagerly to his call. It was bright, with a faint hue of lavender, and it swirled around him in the form of visible currents of air, whipping his hat from his head and scattering his thin, white hair around his shoulders.

He didn't have the time to speak his spells. His wand moved like the conductor of a symphony, and at once energy rushed across the courtyard, joining the onslaught of the aurors in hammering against the seemingly impenetrable defenses of the gaunt warlock who dared to claim this castle for his own.

Sephtis brought his fists together and a shockwave exploded from him, scattering the aurors in all directions. They slammed hard into the ground or against the walls, wands flying through the air, some shattered and others caught up in the cyclone of wind. The Ministry forces collapsed to the ground in a torrent of flapping robes, including Amelia Bones and Kingsley Shacklebolt, who were dazed by the force of the magical blast.

Dumbledore, however, had simply borne the brunt of the blast upon his shields, dispelling them the moment it was past. "Don't do this, Harry!" he shouted over the threatening hum of magic. The castle walls themselves seemed to be vibrating with the intensity of the confrontation, and the air was beginning to heat up as energy cracked and snapped like whips around their heads. "It doesn't have to end like this!"

"It does," Sephtis replied. He spoke normally, but his voice boomed outward like the pulsing shockwaves of his magic. He was floating now, a few inches from the ground, and his cloak was snapping around him as the air snatched and clawed at his body. "This island could only ever be claimed through violence."

Dumbledore clenched his jaw and unleashed a barrage of powerful spells. Every combat hex that he knew was strung together elegantly in a perfect chain, forming a constant, shimmering stream of energy from the tip of his wand to the shuddering dome of Harry's shield.

Looking into the glowing, hardened eyes of this man, Dumbledore realized that there really wasn't anything left of Harry Potter at all. A hollowness tugged at the old man then, the kind of regret that only comes late in the life of a wretched man, as the many deeds of his life compound upon his shoulders. This, perhaps, was the thing that put the odds in Sephtis' favor.

Sephtis retaliated brutally, churning the earth around them so spikes of rock surged upward, shattering against invisible walls and throwing wicked shrapnel into the air. A cackling lance of lightning lurched across the ground, burning a path across the motionless bodies of the executed prisoners, and Dumbledore caught that on his wand, feeling the barely-tamed fury of the young man's magic.

He saw a pulse of red travel down the castle's walls, across the earth, and along his opponent's legs.

 _This might be a problem,_ Dumbledore realized, finally sidestepping as his shields were battered down. He erected new, more powerful defenses and counterattacked into the throbbing, translucent dome of energy that Harry had conjured around himself.

The aurors and the other Ministry officials had scattered in the face of this legendary contest, staring at the exertions of magic from hunched positions near the gate, and they, too, took notice of Dumbledore's predicament.

The castle itself was feeding its power to Sephtis. If these wards were like the wards of Hogwarts, then they were tapped directly into the ley lines of Earth, which meant that a practically unlimited reserve of magic was at the fingertips of this darkly clad warlock, this myth made flesh. He was pure magic unleashed, power incarnate, indomitable and overpowering. Dumbledore struggled for as long as his weakening health allowed, trading lethal curses with his former student, until at long last he was spent.

Sephtis did not kill him. He saw the moment that Dumbledore's defenses crumbled, and his attacks abated as the old, shaking man fell to his knees, swaying dangerously. His wand-arm fell to his side, and he stared, partly awed and partly terrified of the incredible strength of his enemy.

Sephtis pulled his shields close, wreathed himself in white magic, and glided forward. He came to a stop within arm's reach of Dumbledore, hanging motionless before him, suspended by magic. The wind died with a final gasp, leaving the faint stench of ozone and stifling heat in its wake.

Faster than Dumbledore could react, Sephtis grasped his wand-arm in an icy grip. A brief struggle, which lasted only moments before Dumbledore's flagging strength failed, and the Elder Wand was relinquished.

"It was always my destiny to hold this wand," Sephtis murmured, soft enough that only Dumbledore could hear him. "I have sworn my soul to Death, Albus Dumbledore. You thought that I had been possessed because you could not read my mind, but it is Death's cloak, not any power of my own, that conceals my mind from you."

Dumbledore choked on a sharp intake of breath as Sephtis grasped his cursed arm, pushing its sleeve up to reveal the full, horrific extent of the curse. "Riddle cursed the ring," Dumbledore offered weakly as the mortal injury was revealed.

"That is not any curse of _Riddle's_ ," Sephtis replied, spitting the name like bile. His fingers wrapped around the ring, the Gaunt family ring, the ring that held the Resurrection Stone. "The talismans of Death cannot be wielded by just anyone. To try is to forfeit your life. And you have foolishly claimed two of them."

Harry removed the ring, and in his hand the metal dissolved entirely, leaving just the polished, engraved obsidian stone. Harry concealed it within his robes and took Dumbledore's ruined arm in both of his hands. Cool, rejuvenating energy washed from Sephtis to Dumbledore, and the progress of the curse was reversed. Withered flesh was made whole, blackened veins became clear.

Sephtis released the older man. "I have united the talismans of Death. They will serve me well when I go to eradicate the abomination, Voldemort." His feet set down, and he stepped back. His eyes, still blazing with light, swept across the cowering aurors. "I have defeated you. This island is mine. I have reformed the fief of Azkaban, and the title belongs to me. It is recognized by magic, if not by your laws."

This time, no one dared to contradict. Sephtis turned his back on them, as if they were no longer a threat, and burned the corpses which laid in the courtyard to ashes.

"Go," he ordered them. "The remaining prisoners on this island, those who do not wish to remain here, will be sent by the ferry to the mainland tomorrow, at sunrise. Good bye."

Rising to their feet, those who remained of the expeditionary force assessed their injuries and rallied around the kneeling form of their Chief Warlock. They helped him to his feet and retreated to the gate, where they hesitated. It was Amelia Bones, walking with a limp, who addressed the silent, watching figure of Sephtis.

"What will you do with the island?"

"It will be remade," he replied. "It will become a safe haven for those who are hunted. A bastion of light in darkness. All who fear for their lives will come to me, and I will shelter them. Remember that promise, when you are afraid and helpless."

They left him there, with the blowing ashes and courtyard filled with the dead. No one could really believe what they had seen; no one could really understand the defeat of Albus Dumbledore. And it had been such a decisive victory, it didn't even look as though Sephtis had been tired.

As they piled onto the ferry, somber and silent, they each glanced back to the faceless bluffs of Azkaban, the towering battlements, and they wondered.


	30. Part 3 Chapter 3

Part 3 Chapter 3

Sirius Black followed Lord Azkaban, Sephtis, with his eyes as the man rejoined his fellow freemen in the guardhouse. A few of the men had watched his battle through the slitted windows of the battlements, and the rest had felt the power of his magic even if they could not see it. No one said anything as he slipped through them, reaching the same chair that he had claimed before and sinking into it. A black length of wood dangled from his hand, and now he lifted it up to his face.

"Antioch's Bane," he said. The talisman responded to his touch like an old friend, reaching out to him with a core of cold magic and taking hold of his soul; it was the Hand of Death cradling his heart. He had felt it before. He recognized it for what it was.

He shuddered to think what the wand would have done to him if he had not been chosen. It had not killed Grindelwald or Dumbledore, but it had not saved them either. If it had not been their fate to glimpse the power of the wand, then Sephtis sensed a terrible demise would have taken them. The cloak was like an embrace from Death, the wand was his fist, but the stone was the most frightening of all. It _was_ Death. It was an indescribable weight upon his mind, intangible but just as wearying. His hands shook as he contemplated it, and fear drove his thoughts back to the wand.

All it took was a stray thought for the wand to become a staff. It was like the one that he had destroyed, longer than he was tall and thick enough to fill his palm. Intricate symbols in forgotten languages scrolled around the haft. There was no accommodation made for his grip. It was a deceptively simple appearance.

The Hallows reacted to each other as well. His cloak tightened around him, flush with the power that was pouring sluggishly through his veins. With his eyes closed he could feel the cutting edge of the basilisk in it, as well as the influence of Death.

Sirius approached him slowly, as one might approach a wounded animal. "Sephtis?"

This drew the younger man's attention. "There is work to be done," he declared, as if he had not just sat in silence for almost five minutes. He tapped his staff upon the stones and caught his bottom lip between his teeth. "Prisoners need to be released and sent away on the ferry. This prison needs to be converted to a fortress. For that, we require resources beyond what we can scavenge from the island."

"I can go to Gringotts and access my vaults," Black offered.

"We will, once the prisoners have been sorted. For now, I am tired," he rose slowly, leaning on his newly acquired staff. It felt good to rely upon it, and the Stone reassured him that his talismans would never fail him. The rest of the freemen stared at him as he retreated into the Warden's office leaving the door open, but hidden from view.

Sirius scratched his chin through his beard, shrugged, and started the menial task of organizing the rest of the prisoners.

* * *

Sephtis' dreams were not what he expected. He was standing on a street corner, and then he started to walk, but his body moved without input from his mind. He was nothing more than a spectator. He hobbled along the lane of perfectly natural houses, each much the same as the next, with their own square little lawn and neat flower-boxes. There was one house, a bi-level with a red door and the number 54 stapled to the siding, and Sephtis knew that this was what he was meant to see. He came to a halt on the sidewalk outside the house, blinked slowly, and waited.

The percussive _crack-crack-crack_ that broke the tranquility of the suburban neighborhood made him wince, and he knew at once what he was about to see.

Darkly robed figures, wearing the intricate masks of the Death Eaters, swept around the side of the house and blew the door from its hinges with a lackadaisical wave. Sephtis wanted to close his eyes against the inevitable brutality, but he could not even close his eyes. He could only stand as still as a statue, frozen, as the Death Eaters dragged a family of four kicking and screaming onto the street.

The youngest was little more than a babe. Held mercilessly in gloved hands, he screeched and thrashed in vain, and all his efforts earned was a violent toss onto the asphalt. The mother squealed and began to bawl as she was pulled by her dark hair, down a short flight of steps, until she, too, was deposited pathetically in the street.

This was all done in silence. The masked men said nothing. The father put up the greatest fight, and he was the first to die. He landed a solid blow and slipped free, rising to his feet in time to meet the cutting curse of his attackers. His head flipped from his shoulders like a golf-ball hit from its tee, and his body collapsed, spewing blood across the ground.

The others screamed, recoiled from the sight, cowered with their arms over their faces. The young girl was the one that caught Sephtis' eye.

Eleven years old. Wide eyes, thin features, wispy brown hair. She was wearing a flowery little sundress, with white sandals. She was a witch, but she didn't even know it. Sephtis felt the power in her, saw the desperate fire in her eyes. Her hand shot out, clenched in a fist, and a burst of untamed, chaotic power lifted one of the cloaked men from his feet, tossing him through the air as if he weighed nothing. He crashed hard against the brick mailbox, crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut.

The other Death Eater barked a curse and the girl died. Bones all across her body shattered the moment the spell touched her pale skin, and Sephtis saw the invisible force crush her chest like an empty pop can underfoot. She laid beside her father's decapitated head, which stared, sightless, at the sky.

 _This is what awaits Britain. The reckless hatred of demons will tear your nation apart at its foundations. Terror will spread like wildfire._

The Death Eaters collected their fallen comrade and disappeared as the sound of sirens reached them.

 _Imagine the destruction of a single seed of fiendfyre set in London proper. Picture it._

Sephtis did, and the world spun away.

 _Look._

The old and venerable city was a ruin. Worse than the Blitz of the second World War, the city was nothing more than a field of ashes surrounded by the roaring frontier of crimson flames. Buildings that had stood for decades were razed flat, the river Thames scorched dry, asphalt bubbled and melted, glass scattered.

But the worst was the bones. It was a boneyard, stretching for miles. Bits and pieces of human offal stuck from the ground as far as the eye could see, reminiscent of the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

 _You are all that stands in their way. You are all that remain._

Sephtis understood. This was his mission statement. His briefing. It was a call to arms, a cry for help, a prime directive. It was Death giving orders to his loyal soldier. He felt, even in this dream, the pulsing power of his staff, the mark of his office, he felt the cold grasp of his cloak and the weight of the Stone.

"I will not fail," he decreed as the spectacle left him alone in nothingness.

* * *

The goblins were notoriously coarse creatures, trading smiles for sneers. They treated their customers like dirt because they could; they had no competition. The Last Goblin Rebellion may not have bought them the freedom to settle throughout Britain, but they had paid for their monopoly in blood, and it persisted even to this day. Absolute economic superiority. The Goblins were the only bank, the only public stock exchange, and the only accredited lender. Any witch or wizard that wanted to draft a mortgage went to Gringotts. Anyone who owned a business worked with Gringotts. Taxes were processed through Gringotts. Coins were minted at Gringotts. Interest rates were set by Gringotts.

It was a guillotine blade poised to drop. Of course, there were treaties in place to keep the goblins from seizing the vaults, but what was a treaty without the might to enforce it? When push came to shove, the goblins of Gringotts would rather go to war than take Voldemort's blood-supremacy nonsense on their backs.

There had been whispers for some months now, rumors that the goblins were suiting up for war. A war the likes of which the magical world hadn't seen since 1745, when Gringott signed the Treaty of London. These rumors were what gave Sephtis hope, and he saw them verified as he mounted the marble steps leading to the only above-ground goblin structure in all of Great Britain.

There were fifteen armed, armored guards poised beside thick, iron-clad doors. Sephtis could feel magic, alien and indomitable, curled around the bulwark, and he knew that it would take a great deal of effort to shatter this gate. He halted before it, before the armed platoon, and bowed deeply.

"Hail, warriors of the Goblin Nation, and well met," he barked. At once, the diminutive creatures snapped to attention, rattling in their armor as their heads swiveled to pierce this audacious wizard with their beady yellow eyes.

A goblin wearing white armor with a red pauldrons upon his right shoulder stepped forward, holding an arbalest in his hand. "Declare yourself, wizard!"

"I am Sephtis."

The moment he had first called out, a small crowd of witches and wizards, regulars of Diagon Alley, had gathered to watch the exchange. Sephtis saw Ted Tonks in the midst of them, perceived for a moment that the man had recognized him for who he had once been, and then returned his attention to the goblins.

There would be time for reconciliation later. Or never.

"What business have you with us?" the sergeant demanded.

"I wish to treat with the leaders of your nation," Sephtis replied.

Sirius, who had accompanied the younger man to the alley, was quite uncomfortable under the weight of the crowd's expectant eyes. He had cleaned himself up marginally, with Sephtis' help, but there was really no mistaking his identity. Anyone who had known him from Hogwarts would have no trouble picking him out, and there was also the fact of his somewhat infamous reputation. Still, he held his tongue.

He knew better than to interrupt a goblin.

"On what authority?" the goblin demanded.

At this, Sephtis straightened, held his staff before him, and allowed his magic to flare visibly around him in a white corona. "I am the Lord of Azkaban."

The goblin sneered at his display. "Azkaban hasn't had a lord for over a thousand years."

"It has one now," Sephtis reiterated. "I destroyed the dementors which infested it, and defeated the Ministry in open battle. By right of conquest, the title is mine."

The goblin was silent a long time. The silence was filled with the excited murmurs of the crowd, which was beginning to grow larger as the spectacle gathered attention. Eventually, the sergeant snapped his boots together and saluted.

"Well met!" his voice spat, and although the words were meant in kindness, it was more of a curse. "We will escort you."

Sephtis bowed and glanced at Sirius. "Stay and conduct your business. Remember what we discussed."

"Food and water first, then supplies for building," Black repeated with a brisk nod. Sephtis left him standing upon the steps and was quickly surrounded by goblins.

Being short in stature, they much preferred weapons that gave them a bit of reach. Halberds, pikes, and crossbows made up their arsenal, but none of these were implements of crude iron or steel. They were masterworks of their crafts, enchanted and imbued with the culmination of a thousand years of warfare and hardship. These were lethal weapons, murderous works of art that could slay a man with a scratch or level houses with a single bolt.

In short, they were a force to be reckoned with. But then, so was Sephtis. He was not cowed by their might.

The bank of Gringotts was an impressive neo-classical structure which might as well have been carved from a single block of marble. Pointed arches, vaulted ceilings, seamless columns, and the various mineral veins in the marble combined to form a breathtaking work of art. But Sephtis could see it scorched by fire and crumbling in his mind's eye, he felt the morbid doom that awaited this place. The Stone showed it to him as they walked, a movie reel playing endlessly in the back of his mind.

The mighty last stand of the Goblins. The terrible power of the Dark Lord. Demons swarming over the disorderly retreat, blood pumping across the pure white stone.

Be blinked his eyes slowly, focused on their journey. Eventually, they reached a particularly tall pointed arch and passed into a throne room.

Sephtis knew at once that this was a room that had not been seen by a wizard since the conclusion of the Last Goblin Rebellion. He hesitated briefly as the enormity of this meeting settled over him, then followed his escorts to the foot of a dais, where a grizzled old king sat in his ascetic throne.

It was a simple seat carved from slate. The king looked every bit like the warriors that he commanded, for he wore the plate armor of his people, with the insignia of his house upon his breast. The goblins had inherited feudalism from humans, but they had never given it up. For them, it was a most effective social structure; goblins had a deeply loyal instinct. They did not take advantage of each other.

Instead they took advantage of wizards.

"So," the king boomed, and his grinding voice was amplified so that it shook the ground. "You claim to be Lord Azkaban. That is a bold and dangerous declaration to make."

Sephtis perceived that his escort deserted him, leaving him alone in the face of their king. He bowed deeply once more. "Your Honor, thank you for granting me an audience."

"I was intrigued by the idea of a Lord Azkaban. No one had been foolish enough to claim that accursed island wince William the Foul burnt his way across the countryside to face the creatures that infest it. He should have died in that castle, saved us all the trouble of his accursed reign," the king grumbled.

William the Conqueror was not well-liked among goblins.

"Regardless of its legacy, _I_ have claimed it," Sephtis declared. "I seized the island in conquest. The wards that protect it are anchored to my blood. I have eradicated the dementors that haunted the castle. I am Lord Azkaban."

"You are," the king agreed after a moment of silence. "I can taste that castle's foul magic in the air. Tell me, boy, how old do you think that I am?"

The Stone gave him the answer. "You have seen one thousand, two hundred sixty-seven years," he replied quietly. "You knew Jarl Azkaban before he threw his soul to the demons. You participated in the campaigns of the petty kings of Britain when the Denes took to the seas in force."

"Aye," the king replied, seeming surprised and impressed. "You know the history of your fiefdom; that is good. Now, enough banter. Tell me why you have come here and be brief."

"The Ministry of Magic will fall. Soon," Sephtis declared. rising swiftly to his feet. A few of the guards leaned away from him in the face of his sudden energy. "When that happens, the Dark Lord will turn his attention to the muggles that he so despises. And to you. I will protect them, but I cannot win a war without allies."

"So you come here," the goblin king finished. He ground his jaw, leaned forward slowly, and hissed these words: "What makes you think that I care what happens to humans? Why should I give you any more of my time?"

"If you stand alone, the Dark Lord will destroy you," Sephtis replied. "The goblin nation may be mighty, but you are isolated. Your backs are to the wall. You have no mobility; your defense relies upon the sword-arms of your warriors and the stout armor that they wear. Bones will shatter and steel will crumple before the terrible power of the Dark Lord. When the time comes, I will fight at your side. I will open my lands to you as a refuge. In return, I ask for your support."

"You underestimate the strength of the Goblin Nation," the king spat. He rose up, standing before his throne. "You have insulted each and every warrior in these halls with your words. Their ancestors would cry out for blood in satisfaction if they had heard your speech."

"The truth cuts deeply," Sephtis snapped. "You have lived more than a thousand years. You must have stumbled upon wisdom at some point in that time; use it now. Do not allow pride to blind you."

"Gringotts will never fall to a wizard," the goblin replied. "No matter his false titles."

"All it would take is fiendfyre."

That word was a curse among goblins, and they reacted to it as if Sephtis had conjured it before them. A few brandished their spears and howled in rage, while others hammered their breastplates and stamped their feet. The king drew back his lips, baring long, yellowed fangs, but despite all of this, Sephtis said nothing.

The spell had been invented in the Last Goblin Rebellion specifically to cleanse the tunnels of goblin cities. Their mountain homes and underground metropoli had burned under that fire for six years before they had finally capitulated, but it was a spell that would forever be remembered for the terrible casualties that it had inflicted upon them. Over eighty percent of the goblins in Britain had been consumed by it.

There hadn't been a war between goblins and men since that time, but Sephtis knew that it would end swiftly and through liberal use of that curse.

"Fiendfyre brought down your nation once. It will do so again," Sephtis warned. "I am not asking for your subservience. Allow me to take up arms at your side, and together we can bring down the Dark Lord."

"You are the Lord of a dead rock in the sea," the goblin king growled. "What could you possible offer me in return for my allegiance?"

Once again, Sephtis allowed his magic to bleed from his body in waves. The King had seen powerful wizards before—in fact, he had killed his share of warlocks—but even he hesitated when he saw Sephtis' magic. It was not sheer volume that made it remarkable—William the Foul had been stronger—but the potency of it was unlike anything that the king had seen. There was a hard edge to this magic that sung like the razor-edge of a spear point. He felt cold looking at it.

"You can protect our warriors against fiendfyre?" the king barked at long last.

Sephtis nodded. "I can."

A scowl formed on the king's face, and he descended the steps from his throne until he stood before the white corona of Sephtis' magic. "Let us discuss the particulars of this partnership, then."


	31. Part 3 Chapter 4

Part 3 Chapter 4

The Dark Lord raised his gleaming crimson eyes from the pile of scrolls that were laid out across his desk and followed the timid approach of one of his more successful agents. A younger man, tall and dark-skinned, he was a Spaniard duelist with many accolades from his peers. He had been all too eager for Voldemort's cause, once promises of power were whispered to his ears at the proper time and place. It had taken less than a week to convince him, and now, with the Dark Mark upon his soul, he could never turn back.

Not even if he wanted to. He stood before the desk with his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders straight and drawn back formally. The Dark Lord had been a hideous creature before, when his body had been nothing more than shadow, but with the help of his followers, he had conducted a ritual to reform his body, as it had been before his fall.

Only now it was a ruined facsimile of a human body. His skin was gray, deathly, and increasingly marked by spidery cracks like crumbling stone. He was like an old statue weathered by age; there was nothing living in his features. Only his eyes, which were bright and blood-red, belied the life that squirmed torturously in him. When he had first been summoned by the ritual, his screams had been so terrible that several of the men who had performed it were now incapable of hearing.

It was blatantly apparent that the Dark Lord was in constant agony. It only made him tempestuous and unpredictable.

"Tell me about Azkaban," Voldemort asked. His voice was smooth and deceptively calm. His eyes belied the simmering fury that never quite left him in peace, and the agent shuffled his feet before he spoke.

"The island was seized by one of the prisoners," he reported. "A man called Sephtis destroyed the dementors and defeated a force of aurors in battle. Albus Dumbledore engaged him and was disarmed. A boatload of the prisoners was released this morning; the Ministry is dealing with them poorly. Sephtis approached Gringotts and declared himself Lord Azkaban earlier today."

The Dark Lord gave no outward indication that he acknowledged the report. He only blinked slowly, leaned back in his chair, and pursed his lips. "Did you see him? Describe him to me."

"He was tall and thin. He carried a long black staff and walked with a pronounced limp. His right leg might have been wounded. His hair was black, and his skin was pale," the agent reported briskly. "I didn't see his face."

"He called himself Sephtis?" Voldemort murmured. "And you say that he disarmed Albus Dumbledore?"

"That's what I heard, my lord. The Ministry failed to retake the island, whatever the case might be," the Spaniard replied.

The Dark Lord nodded. "The prisoners were released. Why have we not seen any of my loyal followers return to us? Where are they?"

At this, the agent seemed to hesitate, but when Voldemort slowly rose to his feet, his words spilled out in a rush. "Sephtis executed them, sir, with the aurors as witnesses."

"Ah, so there is an adversary worthy of my attention among them," the Dark Lord hissed. "It does not matter; he will die with the rest."

The Spaniard swallowed thickly as the Dark Lord swept around the desk, coming to a halt beside him. "You were stationed in Diagon Alley. Tell me about the defenses of Gringotts bank."

The agent opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by a noisy altercation in the corridor. A horrible scowl pulled at the gashes in Voldemort's skin as he burst into the hall, piercing the squabbling men with his eyes. "What is the meaning of this?"

"My lord!" one of them exclaimed. "I have urgent news from Gringotts!"

He brandished a packet of parchment, which was snatched from his hand. Voldemort's eyes narrowed as he read the declaration that he had been provided with, and after a moment he bared his unnaturally white teeth in a feral grin.

"Yes, a worthy adversary indeed," he whispered. Silently, he scolded himself for being foolish enough to rely upon Azkaban to dispose of his enemy when he ought to have done it himself. He glanced at the Spaniard and slapped his chest with the parchment. "Take that to Lucius. Tell him to expedite his preparations."

The man bowed low and rushed away, carrying Gringotts' daring proclamation under his arm. It was a historical document, one that would be remembered for centuries to come as the spark that set fire to the world.

The Dark Lord returned to his desk, but could not sit. His cold blood roared in his ears, and his fingers were beginning to itch. This familiar bloodlust consumed him at the most inopportune times…but soon enough, there would be plenty of enemies upon which he could slake that lust.

Mid-step, he was suddenly seized by terrible, familiar agony. His jaw snapped shut with an audible _snick_ of teeth clacking together, and he toppled unceremoniously to the ground as his limbs began to convulse. He felt his skin splitting along his arms and chest, and he groaned low in his throat as a deeper, intangible fire began to burn throughout his body. It felt like someone was taking a potato peeler to his skin, flaying him inch by bloody inch, but he would not scream.

He closed his eyes and reveled in the pain, feeling it wash over him, knowing that it was his soul that was suffering now. He had felt the same when Potter had destroyed his diary, and he knew with certainty that another of his anchors was destroyed.

When he could control his body again, he regained his feet and brushed the dust from his robes. The pain would never leave him…but in time it would only become another weapon for him to wield against his enemies. It existed to motivate him, to drive him to greater heights. A low laugh rumbled from him as he spat blood onto the stones; let Potter do his worst.

The Dark Lord would repay him in kind.

* * *

Sephtis released the golden goblet, allowing his goblin escort to relieve him of the burden. It was a large, ceremonial cup, and pure gold was heavy enough for him to consider it good riddance. The king appraised him silently, nodded his head, and barked orders to his underlings.

"It was nearly six hundred years ago that I last saw an artifact so foul," he told this strange wizard. "And never have I heard of any method of cleansing taint that did not involve the destruction of the artifact itself."

"It was the soul, not the goblet, that was evil," Sephtis replied. "It was not through my own power, but the power of my master, that I was able to set things right."

"And who is your master?"

Sephtis watched the goblins as they continued to cart huge stacks of gold through the tunnels of Gringotts, into deeper vaults with more dangerous protections. In lieu of answering the king's question, he tapped the floor with his staff. "You should expect an attack within the week. We have forced the Dark Lord into action. His retribution will be swift and it will be terrible."

"I am sending a platoon of guards with you to Azkaban. They can assist you in preparing the land there. By tomorrow, our honorable elders and others who are unable to take up arms will be ready to join you," the king informed him. "We will use portkeys as long as your wards allow it."

"I can provide you with a portkey capable of bypassing the wards," Sephtis replied. "I will bring it with me in the morning."

"Then our business together is concluded," the king declared. He turned to face a troop of five goblins who had just disembarked from a particularly wide cart. Each was fully armed and armored in the same manner as their fellows, but Sephtis saw the difference in quality between these armaments and those of the rank and file. The lead goblin snapped a crisp salute with one arm across his chest.

"Redtooth at your service," he greeted amicably.

The king inclined his head. "You will accompany Lord Azkaban, friend of the Goblin Nation, to his fief. His commands are my commands until he releases you from his service."

The goblin glanced at the wizard warily. "Your will is my command, sir," he answered with nary a trace of reluctance. Sephtis was impressed. The king glanced at him expectantly, and he hobbled forward.

"Come, we depart immediately."

They guided him back to the main bank, where they encountered Sirius Black negotiating animatedly with a diminutive account manager.

"I'm telling you that there's no way to get a shipment out to the island in the timeframe you've specified," the goblin was saying. "It just isn't possible."

"Contact a muggle company and have them deliver it," Sirius replied sharply. "The island is only a mile off the coast!"

"It is a breach of the Statue of Secrecy," the goblin barked. "A muggle cannot deliver goods to a location as blatantly magic as Azkaban island, and the only magical company capable of transporting the volume you specified requires a week of preparation."

Sephtis joined Sirius at the teller's perch. "Black," he interrupted the man before he could argue once more. "There has been a change in plans. Given the inherent danger in supplying the island during this time of war, I am not willing to risk the lives of civilian contractors. We will find another, less dangerous solution to our problem of supplies. For now, let us buy what we can carry in expandable trunks; our stores will last for several days."

The older man glanced at him, then sighed. "Fine. I've been arguing here for almost four hours and _now_ you tell me it's unnecessary," he griped irritably. "There is still the matter of wood and other essential resources. There are shelters to be built and defenses to bolster all across the island."

"That much we can supply by portkey," the account manager replied. "It will take a few hours to gather the items you require in the quantities that you have listed here, but it can be done."

"Can you have it prepared by tomorrow morning?"

"Aye," the goblin replied. he directed the next statement to Sirius. "But it will cost you extra."

"Fine," Black waved away the concern. "We'll do that."

Sephtis nodded, and once they had concluded their business, he introduced Sirius to Redtooth. "Sirius, this is Redtooth. You will be working with him to organize the island for our goblin friends; rely on his expertise."

"What will you be doing, then?"

"Fighting a war," Sephtis replied simply. "Today, we have struck a blow against the Dark Lord. All accounts associated with his followers have been seized and liquidated by Gringotts by order of the King of the Goblin Nation. He will not suffer this in silence"

Black was astounded. "That's in direct violation of the Treaty of London."

"It is," Sephtis agreed. "But there is no threat from the Ministry; they have not the power to protect themselves, let alone mount an offensive on Gringotts. The only one that will take action is Voldemort. We have forced him to fight us on our terms, in our territory, at a time of our choosing. The vaults of Gringotts will be moved for the duration of the coming siege."

Sirius barked a harsh laugh. "Diabolical," he praised. "And I had just finished playing my games as the Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Black."

He looked entirely too pleased with himself, so Sephtis humored him. "What games?"

"I dissolved Narcissa's marriage, reclaimed her dowry, and exiled Bellatrix posthumously. The name of Black shall never again be associated with scum and villains of Voldemort's kind; this I swear."

Sephtis nodded slowly, half-understanding the intricacies of this statement. Regardless, he appreciated Sirius' loyalty in light of the fact that they had only known each other for three days. There were only a few forms to be signed, and the shipment of supplies was ordered in Black's name. They stepped out, onto Diagon Alley, and there Sephtis gathered his goblin guards around him, laying his hands upon the shoulders of the stout figures at his sides. They each clasped their arms together at the elbow.

"Breathe in," he commanded. At once, they inhaled the crisp February air. "And out."

Just as the sound of their collective sigh escaped them, Sephtis whisked them all away with a thunderous _boom._ The whole alley shuddered with the sound, and Sirius staggered away from the force of the collective disappparition.

He stared blankly at the place where they had stood, incapable of reconciling the incredible feat with the things that he knew about magic. No one had side-along apparated with more than one passenger. He chuckled lightly when he remembered the fact that no one had ever killed a dementor before, either. Sephtis had now done both.

Praying silently that the wards would allow him passage, Sirius twisted his shoulders and disapparated with a soft snap, nearly silent in comparison to Sephtis' concussive performance. The goblin guards evacuated the bank of wizards and closed their doors two hours after Sephtis had departed from their midst, preparing for the inevitable storm.

Across England, the Ministry fumbled in ignorance, unaware of the clouds that were gathering in the south.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore swung his legs idly as Madam Pomfrey continued to mutter under her breath, weaving colorful patterns in the air as she performed increasingly intense diagnostics on the Headmaster, who appeared entirely at ease with the fact that he had been dying just yesterday. Other than severe magical exhaustion, there seemed to be nothing at all wrong with him now, but that was sinister enough to concern the Hogwarts healer, especially since she could name at least six lethal curses that laid dormant for weeks or months before killing their victims.

"I don't understand," she eventually conceded, folding her arms across her chest. "Tell me again what happened?"

"Harry drew me out until I was exhausted. I collapsed. He stood before me, divested me of my wand, removed the cursed ring from my hand, and released me. The curse was healed," Dumbledore reiterated. He knew well enough that he was perfectly healthy; if what Harry had told him was correct, then it was a miracle that he was alive at all. One did not trifle idly with the talismans of Death.

Albus had never really believed in Death as a deity. Sure, he and Gellert had searched endlessly for the Hallows in their youth, but they had operated under the assumption that the artifacts were simply powerful enchantments of long forgotten masters, the works of mortal men. There were examples of particularly powerful weapons that had been enchanted to appear supernatural. Excalibur, the legendary sword of Arthur, was an example of the kind.

But now he was having doubts. He had felt in Harry's touch something that he thought he would never feel again until the day that he died; it was a thing that he had tried for many years to forget. Only once before had he ever felt it, and that had been on Ariana's dying day.

"He healed you of the curse?"

Dumbledore shrugged. "I believe so," he lied. If Harry had been speaking truth, then he had only released Dumbledore from Death's curse. The headmaster had no reason, truly, to doubt the boy now that he had proven himself. With Voldemort moving openly throughout Britain in a physical body, it was impossible for Harry to be possessed, and a man possessed by Tom Riddle would never had destroyed the dementors or executed those who bore the Dark Mark.

Weariness came upon him so suddenly that he swayed where he sat. Madam Pomfrey held him steady with a hand on his shoulder, watching his face with concerned eyes. "Are you sure you're alright? My spells didn't show me anything…"

"I'm alright, Poppy," Albus reassured her gently. "I just need to rest. I am old and tired. I never thought…well, it had been a long time since I faced someone so powerful. Even Voldemort as his greatest could not have outlasted me so easily."

"How did he do it? Mr. Potter was never an exceptionally powerful wizard; it was his prodigious talent that surprised us," Poppy wondered aloud. "In fact, his core had been greatly diminished by years of neglect."

"It was not his magic, but the magic of Azkaban. The island itself gave him power," Dumbledore explained in a whisper. "I hadn't known such a thing to be possible. Even here, at Hogwarts, I am only moderately aided by the wards. Harry…he channeled the ley lines directly into his spells. I was fighting against the might of the world."

Poppy accepted this with wide, amazed eyes. Dumbledore stood up slowly, feeling his age in his joints, and gave her a smile through his unruly white beard. "I think I had better retire for the night. Thank you for your concern."

She patted his shoulder as he passed, walking slower than usual. Without magic, his years caught up with him more easily, and it took him a long time to reach his office at the top of the keep. When he reached his office he noticed a large black raven perched in the open window. It was little more than a shadow against the dark night sky, and when its glinting eyes spotted him its head turned to the side as if to regard him more carefully.

After a moment, it hopped forward, spread its considerable wings, and alighted upon Dumbledore's desk. In the fickle light of mage-candles its glossy feathers seemed almost seemed alive.

Fawkes regarded the newcomer idly for a moment, then tucked his head under his wing dismissively.

"Hello there," Dumbledore rumbled quietly, sinking into his chair with a sigh. "What are you doing here, friend raven?"

The bird extended one set of talons and a dark scroll appeared in its grip. As the wicked claws released their cargo, it regained its usual size and Dumbledore noticed its substantial weight as it thumped upon his desk. The bird drew itself up proudly, croaked at the old headmaster, and swept back through the open window, leaving Dumbledore alone with the parchment.

He immediately recognized the seal of Azkaban prison. In the name of ceremony, that seal had always been associated with the warden of Azkaban, but now that the island had been liberated Albus knew that this was the mark of Lord Azkaban once again. For the first time in more than a thousand years.

Unfurling the scroll revealed a bag of small black coins and a lengthy letter signed by Sephtis. Dumbledore felt the magic in the coins as he hefted their weight in his hand, and his eyes idly trailed across the strict calligraphy upon the parchment until he reached the short, humble signature of the man that had claimed Azkaban for his own.

He removed a single coin from the purse and leaned back in his chair, inspecting its featureless faces. "Curious…" he muttered.


	32. Part 3 Chapter 5

Part 3 Chapter 5

"You should return to Azkaban," Sephtis said to Sirius as they stood idly upon a parapet in the Gringotts atrium, watching the goblin army as they put the finishing touches on their defenses. "The enemy will arrive shortly."

Sirius regarded his godson—or the man that would have been his godson, in another life—levelly for a moment. "I've never left a friend to fight his battles alone," he replied. "I don't plan on starting today."

"I am never alone," the inscrutable Lord of Azkaban replied. He didn't insist, and Sirius let the matter slide by. He could feel his hands starting to shake as they always did just before a fight, and he tightened his grip on his wand.

"What are you going to do about Voldemort?" he asked the younger man. "We aren't at Azkaban; the wards can't help you here."

"I will lose," Sephtis replied easily. "But I shall make it a costly victory for our enemies. When we are finished here, they will rue the day that they assaulted the goblins here at Gringotts."

Sirius stared, gobsmacked, then barked a laugh. "Well then, here's hoping I take at least one of those bastards with me before I die."

At this, Sephtis pierced him with his intense emerald eyes and shook his head minutely. "You must not perish in this battle. I would insist that you return to Azkaban, but you would stay anyway, and then I would not be able to watch your back during the course of the battle."

"Damn right," Sirius agreed with a half-grin. "What's the plan here, anyway?"

Sephtis gestured to the goblins. "They have devised their traps. I have devised my own. The Dark Lord and his army will try to use fiendfyre to clear the tunnels as wizards have always done in wars against goblins. History shall not repeat itself today. We shall counter their fire. Then we shall see how the battle goes for them."

Sirius nodded. "That'd be great if there was a counter to fiendfyre," he drawled. "Unless I'm forgetting something, that curse has to counter."

"There is no direct counter to fiendfyre, that is true," Sephtis answered. "But it is a unique spell. Any magical construct becomes entirely isolated from the wizard who casts it after only a few moments. Then it sustains itself on ambient magic and consumes living creatures wherever it can find them. The same techniques applied to the modifications I made to Azkaban's wards, allowing me to feed from the ley lines. They will find that their fiendfyre curses are rather short-lived throughout the interior of Gringotts."

Sirius shrugged. He wasn't an expert on magical constructs by any stretch of the imagination, so he couldn't say whether Sephtis was crazy or inspired. It didn't matter all that much in the end; he had seen enough impossible things that it wouldn't surprise him to discover that Sephtis had done as he claimed. "When did you find time to alter the wards of Gringotts?"

"I enlisted the aid of my goblin escort to add a subtle layer to the existing matrix. It has its own series of wardstones; I anticipate that Voldemort will destroy the central wardstone shortly after the battle begins. He wouldn't be able to pass the gatehouse otherwise," Sephtis replied.

The goblins suddenly withdrew from the thick, reinforced gates and took up positions behind their barricades. A sentry slipped back into the atrium through a small arch carved under a window and called down to the sergeants who were readying their weapons below. Sephtis listened to the harsh tones of Gobbledegook for a few moments and straightened his shoulder.

"They come," he whispered. "Sirius, listen to me. You must not die in this battle, no matter what might happen. When the tide turns against us, retreat with the goblin elders."

"I can't…"

"You must," Sephtis insisted. "Swear to me that you will."

Sirius clenched his jaw and averted his eyes. "Fine. I swear I'll do it."

"Thank you," Sephtis replied. Redtooth and his men approached the two wizards, grim-faced.

"The Dark Lord is using portkeys to bring his men to Knockturn Alley. There's fighting in Diagon; it looks like a rout," he reported. Sephtis, who had heard these things from the sentry, quieted the goblin with a raised hand.

"I know," he replied quietly. "Remember what I have asked of you."

"Aye, I got it," Redtooth replied with a snarl. "What, do you think I'm an idiot?'

Sephtis shook his head and turned back to the gate. "There will be a great many deaths today," he whispered.

Redtooth clapped his gauntlet against his chest. "They'll curse the name Gringotts for the rest of their days!" he declared. "Damn wizards. No offense to you, Lord Azkaban."

"None taken," Sephtis replied absently. The staff in his hand pulsed gently, and Sirius eyed it curiously. "They have crossed the first of my sentry wards," Sephtis explained.

The waiting was the worst. Knowing that a pitched battle was taking place just on the other side of the gates and sitting idly by was a special kind of torture, but somehow Sirius survived. By the time the Dark Lord started knocking on the door, he almost wished that they could go back to quietly waiting.

The first sign that a battle had begun was the continuous line of wounded goblins that were dragged down from the exterior walls, shouting obscenities as the surgeons triaged their wounds and sent them wheeling away via portkey to Azkaban island, where the rest of the Goblin Nation was waiting anxiously. Sirius recognized many of the injuries on the goblin warriors as dark curses. Limbs were missing, flesh was rotting, and burns mangled the once pristine facets of their armor. The wounded didn't seem diminished in spite of these things, for they continued spouting vulgarities and begging for a weapon up until the moment that a portkey took them away.

Then the gate started to rattle. Sephtis was nodding his head at some unseen stimuli, gesturing minutely with his free hand and leaning upon his staff. Sirius watched him almost as closely as he watched the gate; it was fascinating to see the variety of expressions that flitted across the gaunt man's face. It was almost like watching a dreamer in his sleep. When the gate's shaking turned to thunderous, ground-shaking shudders, Sirius raised his wand and steeled himself.

His hands stopped shaking then.

The wards fell with a sudden lull in sound. It was like someone had sucked the air from the room and held it for a single second. Then it rushed through the tunnels in a hot blast of smoke and flickering blue fire, bursting from the doorways at the rear of the assembled goblin host in time with the absolute destruction of the gate. Shards of wood and metal exploded inward, only to harmlessly impact a thin silver shield and fall impotently to the ground. Sirius saw that Sephtis had raised his staff beside him, and he stared in awe at the wide; indomitable barrier that had protected the goblins from the flying debris.

A crowd of cloaked figures dashed forward, expecting a disoriented foe, and they were met by a volley of wicked quarrels from the goblin crossbows. A series of hastily cast _protego_ shields flickered uselessly as the enchanted projectiles turned their advance into a slaughter. The first wave collapsed in throes of agony just shy of the threshold, lying among the smoldering ruin of the gate. Spellfire followed their demise, splashing against stones as the wizards blindly cast their curses through the smoke.

A concussive blast of wind cleared the air, revealing the full extent of the attacking force. They had not been foolish enough as to gather in tight groups outside the bank, but their numbers were unmistakable regardless. They crowded the rooftops across the street, crouched behind every sort of barrier that could be hastily erected, flitted between the alleys, and pressed forward towards the gate. The alley burned furiously around them, and Sirius saw that they were hindered in their advance by the heat of the flames. It provided a thick, impenetrable curtain of smoke and blinding light which covered their advance all the way to the steps of the bank itself.

But that was where the kill-zone began. The stairs and the gate itself lacked obstacles that could cover an advance, and the bodies of those who had died in the initial charge were making the marble slick with fresh blood. The remains of the gate were more treacherous for the attackers than the defenders.

The goblins were shouting and killing with impunity. The battle seemed to take place in cycles, and Sirius was equal parts fascinated and horrified by it. He didn't even bother to cast spells down at the gatehouse; the intruders were cut down by the goblin marksmen before Sirius could articulate an incantation. The enemy would surge forward, covering each other with stout shields and leap-frogging along the steps in traditional hit-wizard fashion.

Sirius recognized it as the ICW battlemage standard advance against an entrenched position. Wide-area blasting hexes to drive opponents to cover, shields to delay enemy return fire, and overwhelming force. In this case, where the goblins were not greatly outnumbered, it was suicide.

The battle turned to something of a skirmish until another battalion of darkly robed wizards mustered the courage to mount the steps. Spells and bolts were exchanged across great distances. Goblins fell screaming, wizards toppled from the rooftops, stone chipped and crumbled. Through it all, Sirius and Sephtis stood upon the parapet as immobile spectators.

A few stray spells came close to their position, but Sephtis hardly reacted to them. Redtooth, at his side, was gnashing his teeth and growing increasingly impatient.

"Dammit, what the hell are we doing sitting pretty up here while the battle's being won without us?!" he eventually exclaimed, brandishing his crossbow.

"They have yet to reveal their strength," Sephtis replied. "We would be foolish to tire ourselves now, against the vanguard of a greater enemy."

Redtooth hissed, dissatisfied but unwilling to argue. Sirius watched another platoon of wizards begin a hare-brained advance. The quarrels of the goblins were enchanted with various elemental effects, and they caused conflagrations to blossom on impact. Wizards were routinely thrown aside by a blue shock of lightning or frostbitten. Sirius winced as he saw the last of the most recent advance standing amidst the strewn corpses of his fellows, holding a shimmering golden shield desperately as a hail of bolts rained down.

He was frozen and burned in short order. What remained was hardly recognizable as human, and it crumbled to nothing.

It was then that a long red lance of magic surged through the gate, towards the ceiling. Sirius back-stepped and shielded himself as the roof of the bank suddenly exploded into chunks and collapsed. Sephtis reacted then, pointing his staff towards the ruined ceiling and directing the falling stones back towards the entrance, where they struck the ground with a thunderous roar.

"Now the battle begins," Sephtis shouted over the din. He turned, eyes blazing, to stare at Sirius. "Stay close to me! Remember your promise!"

Sirius nodded and glanced at Redtooth, who was practically vibrating in his armor. The goblin army knew that their casualties had been greatly diminished by the intervention of Lord Azkaban, and a cheer rose up from their embattled ranks just as the Dark Lord led this, the final charge.

Through the dusty gloom, he walked like a man entirely at ease. Up the blood-streaked marble steps he came, entirely impervious the goblin marksmen. Swiftly, the goblins adjusted their aim to the other wizards, cutting them down as they rushed to follow their lord. Sephtis, flanked by Sirius and his goblin escort, joined one of the barricades near the center of the bank.

The sergeant there glanced at him, saluted, and returned his attention to his crossbow.

The Dark Lord unleashed fiendfyre in a tremendous wave. Sirius didn't see him cast it, since the cloaked figure had stepped behind a large chunk of rubble, but the furious construct surged over the obstructions without a care in the world, slithering through the air with an audible hiss. Its maw was open wide, and acrid smoke trailed in its wake. The goblins cried out and recoiled from it, cowering behind their chest-high bulwarks, but Sephtis only watched as it came. Sirius was sorely tempted to close his eyes as he watched its inexorable advance. He could almost feel its heat by the time he saw Sephtis' magic at work.

The fiendfyre was crumbling at the edges. Sephtis sneered at it like a man might sneer at a particularly irritating insect, and the construct withered away mere feet from the barricade. The goblins surged back to the defense of Gringotts as soon as the infernal light died out, catching the unsuspecting invaders by surprise.

More fiendfyre was cast, and every time it died just shy of the goblin firing lines. Sirius saw the Dark Lord skulking among the dying remnant of his forces, and he realized then that this was the closest he had ever come to Voldemort. He could see the man's pale, aristocratic features at this distance, dust-smeared and frozen in a vicious scowl.

The Dark Lord saw Sephtis then, standing too tall over a barricade meant for goblins.

"Go," Sephtis said, gesturing towards the right flank. "Join the King."

Sirius hesitated, saw Voldemort beginning to stalk towards them, and backpedaled slowly through the ranks of the goblins.

He saw Sephtis bark something at Redtooth and skirted the barricade, stepping into the open with his staff held before him and his dark vest gleaming in the light of hellfire. Other dark wizards began to focus on Sephtis as well, but Redtooth and the sergeant manning the defenses covered the Lord Azkaban's position with sniper fire, picking off anyone foolish enough to take aim at the stalwart defender of the Golbin Nation.

"Potter!" a voice, great and terrible, boomed across the battlefield.

"Voldemort," Sephtis replied, and his voice somehow resounded in the ears of everyone watching despite the din. Sirius fell into line beside a few goblin marksmen and started casting into the rubble, blasting the stones apart to open up lines of sight for his allies. The battle seemed to lull as the two warlocks conversed across a distance of some twenty meters, and Sirius saw that Sephtis was only forced to deflect the occasional spell.

Sirius wondered if his godson was insane. Then he realized how silly that question was and turned his attention to keeping his head firmly attached to his shoulders. As Voldemort began his assault, so too did his army.

The battle was unlike anything that Sirius had seen before. Even during the last "war" with Voldmort there had never been violence like this. Sirius figured that the magical world had not seen such a large scale battle since the time of Gellert Grindelwald, and for a moment he wondered if this war would become as terrible as that. It never even occurred to him that this might become worse.

The goblins had inflicted grievous damage to the attacking force, but they did not have an infinite supply of ammunition, and eventually they began to take casualties of their own. The defenders began to thin as the attackers continued to swell around the storm of magic being exchanged at the center of the atrium.

Watching Sephtis fight was like watching a dancer upon a stage. He was handicapped, of course, in his footwork, but that did not make him any less graceful. Every action was carefully considered, deliberate and concise. When he stepped, it was a smooth, economical motion. His shoulders rose and fell with even breaths, his staff pulsed and moved in time with a rhythm beyond Sirius' capabilities as an observer. Voldemort's considerable magic washed over the darkly clad Lord Azkaban like water over a stone, and his counter-attacks were cunning, wicked ripostes which forced a lull in the Dark Lord's onslaught. Sephtis never exerted himself greatly, his spells were subtle in nature and in appearance. It was such a stark contrast to the storm that he had become in the battle with Dumbledore that Sirius was momentarily stunned.

Redtooth and his squad formed up around Lord Azkaban as the battle turned, and the goblins began an orderly withdrawal, stopping to engage their pursuers at unpredictable intervals. Voldemort attempted to barrel forward, enraged by the prolonged exchange that Sephtis had forced upon him, but the ground erupted in jagged spikes around him, impeding his advance.

Sirius lost sight of Sephtis then as the goblins around him led the way down into the tunnels.

Sirius found himself bustling through cramped tunnels with goblins rattling around him in their plate armor. Low, growling voices broke the cadence of their forced march at regular intervals, and Sirius quickly lost all sense of direction as the winding corridor took them deeper, deeper into the bowels of the Earth. One of the goblins beside him nudged him under the ribs with his hard shoulder guard, and the breathless wizard glanced down briefly, only to stumble as the warrior in front of his hesitated.

The hilt of a dagger was pressed into Sirius' palm. It was a long, thin blade with a crimson vein down its center. As they passed gently pulsing crystals, the light reflected brilliantly from the princely sheen of its edge, and Sirius recognized it as a murderous weapon as soon as he felt its weight in his hand.

He knew nothing about knives, but something about this particular blade felt…bloodthirsty. "You'll need it," the goblin barked at him in heavily accented English. "Stay close to me."

Taking the more experienced warrior at his word, Sirius unconsciously drifted a pace nearer to his diminutive benefactor. Just in time. The company rounded a corner and burst into a wide, brightly lit tunnel which seemed to be running directly down towards Sanctum. Predictably, this was the place that the dark wizards had stormed just after they had seized the atrium, and now they had packed themselves tightly onto main street, inching towards the brutal fighting which was taking place throughout the dense alleys and steppes of the underground city.

Sirius collided head-on with a tall, broad shouldered Spaniard. Well, he was probably a Spaniard, if the dialect of his expletives was any indication of his nationality. The man was dressed in the usual dark robes, and his wand was held tightly in the brawny paw of his right hand. His swarthy complexion was curiously illuminated by the bluish glow of the crystals along the corridor walls, and the stunned expression that was frozen on his face as they tangled together in a hopeless knot of limbs and flapping robes was priceless.

Sirius would have laughed if he hadn't been so concerned with staying alive.

The Spaniard drew his arm back in an attempt to cast something into Sirius' side, but Sirius managed to catch the man's wrist with a wild swing of his dagger, redirecting the spell and opening a long, weeping gash in the man's forearm. The sleeve of his robe split wide, revealing the glistening black sheen of the Dark mark.

Where the knife had slashed the tattoo, the blood was seeping black and insipid.

Sirius' own wand was rendered useless when his own wrist was seized promptly, but he only changed his grip on the dagger, pressed onward in his haphazard charge, and punched the point of the blade through his opponent's ribs four times with a frenetic pumping action of his left arm.

Sirius disengaged, ducked a wild blasting hex, and spat three cutting curses for good measure, disarming the dark wizard quite literally at the shoulder and further mutilating his chest with two crisscrossing fissures. Sirius watched for a moment as the other man sunk to his knees, soaked in blood and gasping desperately, before a goblin swung suddenly around his side and beheaded the wizard with a deft swing of his axe.

"Don't just stand there!" the goblin howled, diving at the legs of another wizard. His own weight combined with the significant heft of his harness resulted in bone-crushing momentum, and that made short work of the poor fellow's legs. The axe finished the job in arcing hacks which bit murderously into bone and flesh.

Sirius covered the goblin's exposed back with a shield and traded spells briefly with the last of the remaining wizards. The goblins swarmed over them, cutting them to ribbons with axes and swords, and when the battle died out, it was as sudden as a single knife thrust.

Oppressive silence settled in the street for a long moment as the warriors caught their breath. Sirius' goblin comrade hoisted himself up and wiped his axe blade on the clothing of the man he had just killed. His armor, which had been silver with gold engravings, now shined bright red with a fresh coat of blood. A few scorches marred the artistry of its insignia, and there was a sizable dent in the goblin's helmet. But the smile on his face was fearsome enough to overshadow all these things.

The bright, predatory yellow eyes lighted on the blood-stained length of Sirius' dagger. "Good to see it tasted blood," he said, hefting his axe and rolling his shoulders. "It was my da's you know. Couldn't be here himself so he sent me with his sword."

Not really knowing what to say, Sirius nodded dumbly, glancing around at the carnage. He felt numb, cold. At one point in his life, Sirius might have called himself a hardened warrior; he had seen his share of combat as a hitwizard against Voldemort in the last war, but this…this was something else entirely.

The remaining goblins dragged their fallen warriors to a haphazard pile and doused it with what smelled like alcohol of some description. They set the corpses ablaze, stood respectfully aside for all of three seconds, and then marched stolidly past the bloodied walls of the battleground, towards the city below.

"Can't leave their bodies just lying about," the goblin explained to Sirius as they set a brisk pace. "Scavengers and desecrators, you know."

Sirius couldn't get the smell of scorched flesh from his nose, and could hardly care less about the specifics.

At last, they reached the city center of Sanctum, the home of the Goblin Nation. Around them, six levels of the city were up in flames and the forces of the Dark Lord surged through the smoke lie ghosts, preying upon the routing goblins with impunity. Sirius searched frantically for any sign of the other flanks, for Sephtis, and he found them at long last.

Redtooth and his men were leading a ragtag collection of battle-weary warriors. Two of his men assisted the grievously wounded Lord Azkaban between them. Sirius caught a glimpse of a glowing fissure on Sephtis' chest and his breath caught in his throat. The gaunt young man caught his godfather's eyes through the haze of smoke and ash, and there Sirius saw great sorrow.

The king laid his hand on Sirius' shoulder as he made as if to step towards the approaching troop. Glancing over, Sirius saw the old goblin shake his head and extend the length of rope which would take them to Azkaban.

Feeling empty, he took hold and closed his eyes against the devastation that surrounded him.


	33. Part 3 Chapter 6

Part 3 Chapter 6

Wandering through the tent-city outside castle Azkaban was sobering for many reasons, all related to the battle that had concluded just hours ago in a solid defeat. Goblins milled about between the tents, carrying pales of water or baskets of bread, and everywhere Sirius looked he saw the survivors of the battle fumbling wearily with the straps of their armor, staring blankly across the sea, or cleaning their weapons listlessly as they sat in the dirt.

The field hospital was being run by goblin women and scholars close to the castle walls, where it was easiest to bring clean water and other supplies up from the castle store-house. There were some hundred odd casualties to be attended, so the long pavilion-like structure that had been erected was larger than any of the other tents throughout the whole refugee camp. It was there that Sirius went first, to walk along the aisle between the hospital beds in search of Sephtis. He knew that Lord Azkaban was wounded, but after the portkey had swept Black and the King's company back to Azkaban he had been caught up in matters of administration concerning the huge number of displaced goblins that now relied on Azkaban for protection and sustenance.

Negotiating with clan leaders and former prisoners had been a simple, straightforward occasion. There were only eighty people in the castle, and they didn't have the supplies necessary to rebuild the village outside the walls. As far as Sirius was concerned, the goblins, who greatly outnumbered the former prisoners, could have free run of the island so long as they didn't interfere with the defenses of the castle. Which essentially meant that they could do whatever they wanted to do as long as it didn't affect the walls or the wards.

The issue of supplies was a simple one since there weren't many supplies to consider. So far, there were no provisions in place to bring more vital resources to the island, and the matter had been tabled for as long as it took to situate the surviving goblins from Sanctum. Considering that they numbered nearly two thousand, it was a daunting task.

But even those simple discussions had taken too long. Sirius may not have been as close to Sephtis as he had been to James, but he had sworn an oath as a godfather once upon a time, and he meant to keep that oath. He had already spent years in Azkaban for foolishly disregarding that responsibility once. It would take a great deal to dissuade him from it now, even if his godson didn't need his instruction as a child might.

Sirius found Sephtis sitting on a low stool being attended by three goblin women. All of them hissed at him as he approached, crowding closer around their patient, but Sephtis gestured Sirius near and they reluctantly suffered his presence. The older man watched the elfin creatures as they worked on what must have been an absolute mess of cuts which marked Sephtis' back.

One, with a needle and thread, was stitching. Another was dabbing at the wounds with a wet cloth. And the third was holding Sephtis' shoulder and applying a sort of medicinal paste. They worked swiftly like a well-oiled machine, but Sirius was more impressed by the fact that Sephtis wasn't reacting to the needlework beyond the occasional fleeting grimace.

He was also somewhat alarmed by the glowing fissure in the younger man's torso. He remembered seeing it through Sephtis' torn tunic. His eyes traced its course from chest to hip until he realized that he had yet to do anything but stare. He cleared his throat and watched the goblin nurses as they cut the thread and moved to the next cut.

"What happened?" Sirius asked, referring to nothing in particular.

For a moment, no reply was forthcoming. Then, Sephtis wet his lips and began slowly. "Voldemort followed my company down a side passage. I led him on a wild chase in an attempt to keep him from the city for as long as possible to allow ample time for withdrawal. A blasting curse killed four of our number and tore up my back with shards of stone. I collapsed the tunnel to prevent Voldemort from overtaking us. Redtooth and his remaining men escorted me from the field."

"We lost," Sirius summarized.

The goblins paused long enough to glare at him, but didn't comment otherwise.

Sephtis replied almost immediately then, with a hard edge to his words, "Sanctum was lost, but its people live on. Many warriors were killed, but many survived. A tragedy, but it was not as terrible as I had expected."

Sirius almost laughed. "Not as terrible? What did you expect?"

"I expected to die," Sephtis answered perfunctorily. There was steel in his voice. "And I would have done so gladly. I did not go to Gringotts expecting to win the war; I went there to protect as many people as I could. That I have done, and so I am satisfied."

As far as goblin expressions went, the looks the nurses gave Lord Azkaban could possibly be described as soppy. Insofar as goblin's were concerned, they might as well have swooned openly, but Sirius was glad that they were not so ostentatious.

He considered Sephtis' words for a moment and found himself scowling. "If you had died, then who would remain to fight against Voldemort?"

Sephtis waved his concern aside. "I am very difficult to kill," he answered. As an explanation, he traced the gently pulsing stripe that had been carved into his chest. "This scar is from the Killing Curse. I expected that my injuries would be mortal, but I had instructed Redtooth to bring my body back to Azkaban, where I could recuperate as I have done before."

"That doesn't make any sense," Sirius scoffed. "So you claim to be immortal?"

"I have united the talismans of Death," was the noncommittal reply. At Sirius' skeptical expression, Sephtis shrugged and winced as the goblin nurse tightened her grip on his shoulder in warning. The stitches in his back must have pulled painfully.

Sirius waited in silence, not really knowing what to say, until the goblins had finished. "Drink," the eldest of the three said, bringing a small vial of pink fluid around. She stood before Lord Azkaban, close, with her hand outstretched. The other was braced upon her hip and her eyes were narrowed sharply.

Smiling, Sephtis drank. "Thank you, Michkal."

The goblin bowed low and hurried off.

The others hesitated for a moment before following her, casting glances over their shoulders as they went. once they were out of earshot, Sirius moved as if to assist his godson as he stood, but Sephtis only summoned his black staff and waved Sirius back. Moving slowly, he rose to his feet and remained standing with his eyes half-closed.

Sirius saw the tightness of the muscles in his jaw and knew that the younger man was fighting valiantly against what must have been agonizing pain. At long last, he released his breath in a low hiss and took a few steps along the aisle between the hospital beds. When the scope of his injuries was revealed, Sirius fought to contain an exclamation of horror.

His back was an absolute ruin. There was hardly a single square inch anywhere along his shoulders that wasn't marred by the tight, impeccable lines of expert stitching. Streaks of blood still seeped from a few of the wounds and ran along the contours of the gaunt man's lithe muscles. When he stepped the morbid tapestry which had been worked into his skin flexed disturbingly.

"You should sit down," Sirius recommended as evenly as he could while he watched Sephtis struggle to walk. his suggestion was ignored completely, although Sephtis did pause for a moment to summon his trademark cloak. Black noticed the way that his shoulders relaxed as soon as the shimmering black fabric wrapped itself around him in a tight embrace. The cloak moved almost as if it had a life of its own, sculpting itself to Sephtis' body in a slow, caressing motion. The fabric settled over his shoulders, pressing tightly against him like a vest.

Sirius wondered how the cloak had escaped damage in the battle.

Sephtis paused at the first occupied bed, and its occupant eyed him tiredly. Here was a goblin warrior laid low, wearing a bandage on his right shoulder where his arm ought to be and lying with a bloodied cloth over his chest. His breaths came slow and weak, but his eyes were still bright, and he followed Sephtis with them as the human approached.

"Alas," Lord Azkaban murmured, "that my power should be so restricted to destruction. If it had been within my capabilities, I would have healed you now. Instead, I can only offer my words as a poor substitute. Your sacrifice, made valiantly in the defense of your nation, was not made in vain. With your blood, you have bought the Goblin Nation deliverance from destruction."

If the warrior could speak, Sirius felt that he might have cursed at Sephtis then, if the fire in his eyes was any indication of his opinion of that little speech. But that fire was rapidly fading as his breathing became more labored. Leaning closer, Sephtis reached out and held the dying warrior's healthy shoulder.

"Look at me, warrior," he demanded in a whisper. The goblin, having no choice, did so.

By now, a few of the nurses had stopped to watch the spectacle. Any of the patients who were well enough to lift themselves up were watching from their beds, and a sort of quasi-silence had settled over the field hospital as they awaited what seemed an inevitable death.

"Breathe!" Sephtis suddenly exclaimed, holding the warrior's gaze. "Fight! Are you a warrior or a coward?"

Out of pure spite, the goblin swallowed another breath. Sephtis gave a remarkably toothy grin and released his staff so that he could place his hand over the blood soaked bandage which bound the warrior's chest. This drew a gasp of pain from the warrior, whose eyes fluttered open and closed.

"Again!" Sephtis insisted. "This is your life; seize it! Don't let it slip through your fingers!"

Sirius saw a subtle light pass from the long fingers that laid upon the blood-soaked linens, and the warrior opened his mouth in another desperate gasp. His lips turned up in a snarl, his teeth flashed, and his eyes rolled back as his body relaxed with finality. Sephtis wrenched himself from the wounded goblin as if he had been burned. The nurses rushed forward, past the forlorn figure of Lord Azkaban, who watched as they pressed in around the motionless warrior. Sirius eyed his godson and felt hollow.

"He's alive," one of the goblins declared, and then Sirius could only stare in amazement at the creature that he had thought was dead. Sephtis nodded slowly, called his staff back to his hand with a negligent twitch of his fingers, and continued shuffling along the aisle. He stopped unexpectedly and spoke with the warriors there, offering similar words of encouragement to each of them, urging those who were dying to hold onto every breath as a treasure, and bringing hope to the despairing.

By the time they reached the last of the patients, Sirius was about ready to fall over where he stood. He had trouble even imagining the will that it had taken Sephtis to place one foot in front of the next, and he was about to insist that Sephtis go and find some place to rest when he saw Redtooth waiting just outside the tent.

The goblin had yet to remove his armor. He sat in the dirt with his axe across his knees, cleaning its already polished blade and staring out across the torch lit sea of tents. He saw Sephtis and surged to his feet, stowing his axe at his belt and bowing low.

"Lord Azkaban," he greeted. "It is good to see you on your feet."

"My injuries were not so terrible that you should have worried," Sephtis informed the goblin sergeant. The slitted yellow eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly in silent reproach. "Tell me, how do your men fare?"

"Of the ones that made it out, three have minor injuries," Redtooth reported brusquely.

"I did not see them in the hospital."

Redtooth shrugged dismissively. "Nothing serious enough for all that fuss."

"Well, how do you feel about making a trip to London?"

Sirius interjected them, cutting the air with his hand. "That can wait. You need to rest," he declared. "I'm barely standing on my own two feet, and I was uninjured!"

Sephtis turned his implacable stare to the older man and silenced his objections. The severity of his expression brought Black up short, and he was struck momentarily by the profound maturity in his godson's eyes. "The fires of Diagon Alley will have spread to muggle London. There is advantage in being the first to inform the Prime Minister about the current state of affairs; we can influence their understanding of events. If the Ministry of Magic is allowed to lie in a pathetic attempt at a cover-up, then any contrary account will be dismissed as a conspiracy. If Voldemort is allowed to spin his tall tales, then we could end up as the rebels and he as the patriot."

"The muggles aren't so gullible," Sirius retorted weakly.

"An _imperius_ would be simple enough, I think," Sephtis countered. "Or a well-executed obliviation. Legilimency could be used to influence the thoughts of high-level government officials. There is no choice; I must act now," Sephtis replied. He hesitated to breathe deeply though his nose. "I will rest when I return. Will you accompany me, Redtooth?"

"Why not?"

Sirius but his tongue and watched as Sephtis hobbled back towards the castle until he disappeared through one of the wide arches at the base of the southernmost tower. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose and shuffled off to find a bed.

 _Leading by example..._ he thought with a tired grin.

* * *

"Get Dunmouth in here," Prime Minister John Major barked into the phone. He didn't bother waiting for a reply from his secretary as he walked around the side of his desk, falling into his chair with a solid _thump_ and rubbing at his temples with his thumbs.

His eye caught the clock on the right wall of his office, above the coffee table with a bottle of amber liquor seated innocuously upon it. The brandy looked particularly inviting at the moment, but John dismissed the temptation. He had to have a clear head for the undoubtedly infuriating conversation that he was surely about to have with the ambassador from the Ministry of Magic.

His phone beeped and the voice of his secretary came though. "Sorry, sir, Ambassador Dunmouth went home early today."

"What time?" John asked immediately. The answer came a few minutes later.

"Three o'clock."

So right after news about the blaze that had swallowed four city blocks in London broke on all international news networks at the same time. John Major sighed explosively and knew immediately that the man wouldn't be back for some time; at least for as long as it took for a bunch of idiots to fabricate a suitable explanation for the unexplainable. Just as he was beginning to consider some rather more extreme methods of getting into contact with the Ministry of Magic, his phone beeped again.

"You have a visitor."

"Well? Who is it?" John asked rather more sharply than he had intended. Damn, it was too late for this.

"A young man claiming to be Lord Azkaban wants to speak to you. He says it's about the fires in London," the secretary replied.

At once, John sat up straighter in his chair. He recognized the name Azkaban as a prison for criminals of a magical nature, but that didn't matter nearly as much to him as the fact that this was someone that could shed some light on the catastrophe that was being imaginatively called the Third Great Fire of London.

"Send him up."

It didn't take long for the office door to admit two figures, both cloaked in black. One of them was walking slowly, with a staff to aid him, but what John found most interesting about them was the disparity in height. The taller of the pair was the one who walked with a limp, although he appeared to be on the younger side of middle-aged, and his companion seemed at first much more able-bodied, save for the fact that he was only four and a half feet tall.

The diminutive fellow was wearing a hood that totally obscured his features, so John focused on the taller man. He was gaunt, tall, and sharp. His eyes were bright enough to be unnatural, and his hair fell about his face in disorderly black locks. His bones were pronounced and his skin was paler than snow. It would have seemed terribly unhealthy if it were not for the definition of the muscles in his jaw and neck.

They drew near to the Prime Minister's desk and John noted with some surprise that the skin of the taller man's face appeared too young for him to be middle-aged.

"Lord Azkaban? I'm not familiar with the title," John said as he stood up to shake hands.

The man's grip was firmer than John had expected, especially considering how long and thin his fingers were. There was surprising strength in him, it seemed.

"I am the first one to claim it in more than one thousand years," the man replied. His voice was deep but somewhat boyish. Its pitch was held somewhat like someone who was used to their voice being higher and who had only recently begun to familiarize himself with the changes in it. "Do you mind if I sit down? I was wounded rather severely in the battle."

"Of course," John replied, gesturing to the chairs opposite his desk. Lord Azkaban settled gratefully into the chair, and the rather casual mention of a battle had just begun to burn in the Prime Minister's mind when he spoke.

"This is my companion and bodyguard, Redtooth," Lord Azkaban gestured to his companion, who remained standing at his right shoulder. "He is a goblin. You are familiar with goblins, Prime Minister?"

"I know of them," John replied, looking at the shorter fellow in a new light. At a gesture from Lord Azkaban, Redtooth dropped his hood, revealing his dark, leathery skin and bright cat-like eyes.

It was one thing to read a description of a goblin on a page and quite another to have one standing in your office, peering at you with predatory gaze.

"I brought him here because he is a warrior of the Goblin Nation, sworn in service to his king," Lord Azkaban continued. "He can testify that the things I am about to tell you are the truth."

"I assume you can explain to me why there have been fires raging throughout London for the better part of six hours?"

"Yes," Lord Azkaban replied. "I can. The short answer is this: England is at war. It is a civil war of a kind that hasn't been seen since the International Confederation of Wizards first declared its Statutes of Secrecy in 1692. It began today in London with a battle in the underground goblin city Sanctum. Diagon Alley, the center of magical business and trade in Great Britain, was utterly destroyed. When the wards fell, the fires that so consumed that alley spread throughout London."

"You fought in the battle?"

"I did," Lord Azkaban replied. "And so did Redtooth, along with more than five hundred of his goblin brethren. They are few in number, like wizards. Our enemies were not so numerous, but they wielded great and terrible magic for which we had no counter. Sanctum was destroyed."

John leaned back in his chair, stunned. He didn't quite know where to begin. "Why is this the first that we're hearing about this?"

"The Ministry of Magic is as ineffectual as it is corrupt. Which is to say, completely," Lord Azkaban replied. "The elements of the magical community that have precipitated this war have been an integral part of the Wizengamot since its conception in 1066. They have long concealed from you the true nature of their agenda, and for years have cultivated a decidedly anti-muggle sentiment among the magical population of Britain. They were not concerned with sharing information with you. And now that they have seceded completely from the Wizengamot and declared themselves a separate government, those that remain are too busy attempting to brace themselves against the inevitable storm to take the time to discuss politics with the mundane government."

"So what are you doing here, then?" John asked. "You don't represent the Ministry?"

"Hardly," Lord Azkaban replied. "I am Lord Azkaban. When William the Conqueror pacified Azkaban during his conquest, he altered the magic there to bind the castle and its surrounding lands to the Wizengamot, but his alterations were only valid if there was no heir to the title of Azkaban. I seized the island by conquest, and thereby took the title. So now the land belongs to me, and the castle with it. I am an independent sovereign."

John bit his tongue and tried to wrap his head around the idea. "So a third faction?"

"I anticipate that the Ministry will fall within the month. Then there shall only be two," Lord Azkaban drawled. He leaned forward with a grimace and tapped the ground with his staff. "I cannot emphasize enough the gravity of current events. The man who leads this rebellion is called Lord Voldemort. You might remember him, or you might not. What I can tell you is this; his vision for the British Isles includes but is not limited to the eradication or forceful relocation of all non-magical folk."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He has a particular hatred for muggles, Prime Minister," Lord Azkaban summarized. "He could burn all of London to ash just as easily as he burned Sanctum. He wants to create a magical kingdom here in the British Isles for Magical people. What do you think that means for you, as a mundane individual?"

John pursed his lips. "And I assume you want to tell me that you have my best interests in mind? You don't think I've heard this kind of tripe before?"

"I'm sure you have, sir," Lord Azkaban replied. "But I am not asking for your help. I am here to inform you about a threat to the very existence of your country. Then I will offer to swear fealty to the Queen of England. And you will decide whether or not you want my support in the coming war."

"How do I know that there's a war happening at all? All I have is your word," John replied.

Lord Azkaban was leaning forward as he spoke in a low, urgent voice, "You have already seen the beginning of the war, Prime Minister. London burned today, and that was merely collateral damage. The Goblin nation would have been exterminated to the last man, woman, and child if I had not intervened on their behalf. There are two thousand refugees living in tents on my island, and more than a hundred wounded soldiers. If you do not believe what I have said about Voldemort and his supporters, I would urge you to remember the last time that he rose to power in Britain."

"I don't know anything about that," John replied stubbornly. It was, in fact, mostly true. The name Voldemort seemed familiar to him, but he would have to consult wiht Her Majesty's court wizard to find out more information, and he wasn't about to go off half-cocked because of a name, no matter whose name it was. "The plight of the goblins is most unfortunate, but I can't commit to anything on your word alone."

"I am offering my solemn oath to Her Majesty's Government," Lord Azkaban reiterated. "I am offering my staff and my sword to the Queen."

"For that, you'll have to speak to the Queen," John replied. "As for the rest, I can say this: thank you for bringing this information to my attention. My hands are tied at the moment; I can't take action until I've had time to verify your claims."

"At least remember my warnings," Lord Azkaban insisted, although he looked quit disappointed. John tried to put himself into the wizard's shoes and found the situation impossible. "They will turn your own mind against you if you are not careful."

"That I can do," John agreed with a sigh. He knew well enough the dangers of magic; the court wizards talked about them often enough that it was almost tiresome at this point. "For the record, I think you're probably telling the truth. I haven't heard anything from your Ministry for almost six weeks now, and their liaison disappeared just after the fires started spreading across London."

Lord Azkaban stood slowly, swaying on his feet. "How can I contact the Queen?" he asked.

"I will tell her that you came to me," John replied after a moment of deliberation. "She will contact you. I am sure that the Crown has ways to get in touch."

Lord Azkaban shuffled towards the door, looking as if he might topple over at any moment. "Thank you for your time," he said over his shoulder. His pale hand settled on the shoulder of his guard. John blinked, and they were gone.


	34. Part 3 Chapter 7

Part 3 Chapter 7

Sephtis dreamed that he was standing on the crest of a grassy knoll, looking out across an empty plain under the light of a pale gray sun. The air was deathly still around him, like someone who was holding their breath, but nothing broke the silence. His own voice was stifled, his body frozen, his eyes locked upon the bland line of the distant horizon, and, regardless of his mounting anticipation, El never appeared to speak with him or teach him. It seemed like he stood upon that hill forever, until the colors of the landscape had started to bleed together. The sun dropped lower in the sky, but even the sunset was colorless and dull.

The world was missing something vital.

He opened his eyes at long last and was relieved to find himself surrounded by darkness. It was hard, sometimes, for him to distinguish dreams from reality, but the truly uncomfortable bed that pressed against his back and the harsh linens of the sheets were enough to convince him that he was awake and resting in the castle. Sitting up, he stretched his back and winced as a storm of twinging aches crawled across the stitches there. Yes, he was most certainly awake.

In Azkaban Sephtis could afford to heal himself by meditative trances, but they were time consuming and if there was any one thing that was proving difficult to come by, it was time.

There were stars in the sky outside the angled slit that constituted the only window of his office, so he knew that it must be very early in the morning. Instead of dressing himself and going about the many tasks that were waiting for his attention, he sunk to his knees on the stones and waffled for a moment with his hands until they settled naturally upon his knees.

Never before had the inclination struck him to _pray_ in the traditional sense. El had always been very conversational before, and He had always been close. Since Sephtis' imprisonment in Azkaban, however, it was easy to feel isolated. His dreams were empty now, whereas before they had always been a place of comfort before. That was not a feeling that he enjoyed; he had never truly lived without El's constant presence. He wondered if this was just another stage of his complex relationship with the god, or if it was a permanent

He didn't know what to say, really, so he recounted the events of the battle into the still air. He tried to imagine the things that El might have told him in response-all the criticisms and reassurances that he had grown accustomed to feeling dull when it was his own mind that made them. He asked for guidance, and he felt the invisible embrace of Death's cloak and the gentle warmth of the Stone in response. Eventually, words fell away and he simply knelt with eyes closed, trying to make sense of his thoughts.

His introspection was interrupted by a disturbance along the perimeter wards. It was such a rare sensation that Sephtis couldn't place it for a moment, but his eyes had snapped open when he felt the magic react as an uncomfortable buzz at the back of his skull.

Sensing with wards was an incredibly touchy exercise. Sephtis accomplished the task by forcing some of his own magic into the ward scheme and feeling the feedback, which gave him a general sense of things that were covered by the wards. It was easiest to visualize the scheme of Azkaban's wards as a hemisphere centered upon the castle, and when magic pulsed through them Sephtis could imagine his surroundings like radar or sonar. He did this several times until the stones beneath his knees were warm, and only then did he notice that there was a ferry approaching the island.

He apparated to the sheer cliffs overlooking the sea but saw the murmuring waves and a reflection of the winking stars. He could tell that the ferry was drawing closer to the only natural harbor of Azkaban: the coarse beach at the foot of the winding stairs leading to the gate of the castle. He took his time as he navigated the steps, tucking Death's cloak tightly around himself and walking with the aid of Antioch's Bane. He could have apparated down the stair, but the ferry was still some distance away, and he was in no particular hurry.

He enjoyed the sound of the waves against the hard rocks and the swirling vistas of the night sky while he walked.

Sephtis reached the beach in time to watch the ferry slide roughly onto the sand, anchored there by the ancient charms put in place by William the Conqueror almost a thousand years ago, when he first made the journey from the mainland to the island. The ferry was the same as it had always been; none the worse for wear despite the passage of time. It was just as obdurate as the walls of the castle, sustained by the magic of the ley lines beneath the sea, and Sephtis knew that it was as close to immortal as any mortal construct could get.

There didn't seem to be anybody on board, but Sephtis was cautious in his approach regardless. Antioch's bane formed a wicked spear in his hand, but he didn't bother with a shield. Not yet. Once he stepped onto the ferry itself and saw its only passenger, he relaxed his guard completely and rushed forward.

A house elf was laid out across the bench, mangled terribly. The seawater had treated him cruelly in the journey from the mainland, streaking his small body with salty trails and diluting the blood that seeped from cuts across his arms and chest. One of his legs was crushed. His face looked as if it had been burned and smashed repeatedly with a blunt instrument. Sephtis saw a white shard of bone somewhere in the mess.

He glimpsed a weak, failing breath and swiftly, gently, gathered the creature into his arms. Without his staff, it was difficult for him to stand, but he managed the task and apparated to the field hospital. Nobody was awake, and Sephtis didn't think that there was time for him to search out a healer, so he only rushed as swiftly to an empty bed as he could, set his precious cargo upon the sheets, and sat beside the bed, feeling helpless.

"…ster 'Arry P'tter…" the elf sighed. Sephtis shushed him softly and caught the weakly raised hand between his own.

El had not taught him much of healing other than the basics required of a duelist, and the few texts that mentioned it were sparse on details. Sephtis could seal his own cuts, set his own bones, and he could put himself into a healing trance, but these skills changed dramatically when the patient was an outside entity. It became even more complicated by differing species. He didn't think that there was much he could do for this poor elf, but that didn't mean that he wasn't going to try.

He knew that elves, as a general rule, were remarkably hardy. It was almost impossible to kill a house elf with magic, and their bodies could withstand an incredible amount of abuse. Like most magical creatures they hard tough skin and durable bones, but house elves were also quick to recover from their injuries, a peculiar trait of their species.

Sephtis gathered his magic in his hands as he had done when he was carving runes into the stone walls of his cell, but he allowed it to bleed through his skin in a slow rhythm.

It wasn't healing that would have helped anyone other than an elf. As far as Sephtis knew, only elves could sustain themselves on magic alone, and the steady supply that he was providing would hopefully amplify the elf's natural healing factor.

There was no immediate effect, but the elf did not die. Harry closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and resigned himself to wait.

After a time, he noticed that he was whispering words in a language that he couldn't understand. He felt the Resurrection Stone's influence in them, so he did nothing but listen with an idle mind as the strange, flowing sounds poured out from him like the magic that he was funneling through his body from the wards. Sephtis didn't know how long he maintained his vigil, or why he felt so strongly compelled to do so, but when he finally released the elf's small hand and sat back the sun was rising behind the castle's walls and the goblin nurses were beginning to shuffle through the field hospital.

"So, now," a familiar voice brought his attention to his side, where Michkal was standing at the foot of the bed. She was watching him closely, eyes straying to the elf before focusing upon him once more. "A healer and a warrior?"

"Will he live?" Sephtis asked. "I only…well, I wish I could have done more."

Michkal walked around the side of the bed and leaned over the elf for a moment. She gently moved the spindly arms and peeled the soaked pillowcase from the creature's chest. Her attention focused quickly on the damage that had been done to its face. Even Sephtis had to admit that there was a substantial improvement there compared to what he had seen in the ferry.

Before, the whole structure of the elf's face had been ruined. While the skin was still torn and bruised, the bones appeared to have regained their usual shape, and the eyes were intact once more. The nose was still crooked, broken, but what wounds remained didn't look fatal.

"His injuries are terrible," Michkal said. "But elves are…stubborn. He will live."

Sephtis sagged with relief and slowly regained his feet. He rubbed his stiff leg and grimaced as he stretched his back. Michkal prevented him from leaving by worrying over him until he sat down in a chair, then she attended to the elf. When she returned, she checked his stitches, applied a salve, and shooed him from her hospital.

He walked through the goblin camp, past collections of determined people who were beginning to go about rebuilding what remained of the centuries old village which had once thrived upon these same bluffs that now hosted the goblin nation. Armored guards set the royal tent apart from the rank and file, so it was there that Sephtis walked.

He didn't expect the guards to salute him as he approached, and he hesitated briefly at the threshold. "At ease," he mumbled, sweeping through the tent's flaps before he could see if it had been the proper thing to say.

The goblin king was kneeling before his armor, which was situated upon a wooden stand. Sephtis saw the scorches and dents in the priceless suit of plates, and he wondered why the king had not cleaned it. Seeming to know who it was that had so briskly stepped into his tent, the king straightened his back, but he did not stand.

"It is customary for the commander of an army to leave his armor in disrepair for some time after a defeat," the king explained quietly. "It helps to remind him of his failures."

"You and your warriors fought valiantly," Sephtis offered. The king scoffed and stood at long last. He was wearing a simple white toga tied at the waist with a crimson sash that poured from his hip like blood. His dark gray skin was lined with creases that betrayed his age, but there was nothing about him that suggested fragility.

"Not valiantly enough," he replied. "I will be remembered forever as King Ithrigan the Weak. The last King of Sanctum. I think perhaps, that the battle was never meant to be won. The goblin species has been doomed since the day that Merlin cursed our magic; it was only a matter of time until wizards found spells to ruin us."

"I didn't know that Merlin cursed the goblin people," Sephtis replied curiously.

Ithrigan barked a harsh laugh. "Wizards don't remember. Why would you? My kind is little more than a footnote in your history, a nuisance described by a series of troublesome little skirmishes. And now we will die a slow, ignominious death in obscurity. Alas that I should have be the king to lead his people to extinction."

At this, Sephtis drew himself up and appeared as the lord that he was. "Not while I live," he swore. "If it is within my power, I will restore your people's nation. The war cannot last forever. We will rebuild."

"You are a braver lord than I, to find hope in these dark times," the goblin replied dryly. "We have been driven back. Here we wait to starve, and the Dark Lord runs free across the mainland. Eventually he will mount a siege of the island, and we have not the strength to resist him. So spare me empty promises and vague reassurances; I have no use for them."

"The battle at Sanctum was a pyrrhic victory for the Dark Lord. His casualties were severe. His wealth was effectively halved, his forces decimated, and the morale of his army will be severely crippled. It will take him a month now, rather than a week, to conquer the British Ministry," Sephtis speculated. "That is time that we can use to prepare."

"Prepare for what?" Ithrigan asked scathingly.

"We have a war to fight. Azkaban cannot be conquered; it is our citadel. We have the wealth of the evacuated vaults of Gringotts. We have warriors," Sephtis intoned. "The battle of Sanctum was not the end, but the beginning."

The goblin seemed to consider that for a moment—goblins were always game for a good bit of violence—but he eventually scoffed. "We have no resources. No supply of food or water. No weapons or the means to craft them. Shall we take sticks and stones against the Dark Lord and his warband?"

"You're right," Sephtis agreed easily. "Right now we don't have the means necessary to wage war effectively. I intend to swear fealty to the Queen of England. As one of her subjects, she will be obliged to assist us. We can purchase supplies from her government, and her own military may provide us with weapons. There are other nations that would be willing to supply us, I'm sure."

"Mundane steel is useless against wizards," King Ithrigan griped. "It would take weeks to properly enchant their shoddy human craftsmanship."

Sephtis barked a short laugh. "You will find that mundane weaponry has advanced somewhat in the last century. Firearms are their most effective weapons now."

"Well...it could work," the goblin eventually decided. "If you can convince the mundane Queen to get involved. But I will not represent my people for much longer. Already, they have begun the process of searching for a worthier king. Once the candidate has been chosen, I will fight him in a judicial duel, adjudicated by our elders. I imagine that the outcome will not be favorable to me."

"You are a mighty warrior," Sephtis answered hesitantly.

"I am old," King Ithrigan replied sourly. "Not an Elder yet, but too old to put up a fight in an adjudicated duel against a veteran warrior. Do not worry for me; I will live out my days as a pariah. The King who lost Sanctum to wizards, the King who was forced to rely upon a wizard to save his own people. Ha! It would be better if the duel was to the death. Then it could at least be said that Ithrigan died honorably, even if he lived as a coward!"

"It is not cowardice to accept help when it is offered, or to retreat when you are beaten. Your actions saved thousands of lives. I, at least, will always remember you favorably."

Ithrigan bared his teeth. "Be gone with your honeyed words, pathetic wizard," he hissed. "Go and beg at the feet of your Queen. I am finished with you."

Sephtis might have taken offence that this sudden animosity from the goblin King, but he recognized a despairing man when he saw one, and so he bowed respectfully and swiftly departed. Lord Azkaban knew that the goblin king would probably hate him for the rest of his days. He would recognize and honor the valiant deeds that Sephtis had done in saving his people, but he would hate them at the same time. He would hate that they had been made necessary by the gradual erosion of the goblin nation. He would hate that his kingdom had capitulated so easily after some thousand years of stubbornness.

It was the kind of hate that would never abate.

Sephtis spent time in the camps, speaking idly with goblins as he walked, sitting with warriors as they ate, sharing life with the refugees as the hours ticked by. There was a pervasive sense of foreboding over the whole of the camp, and it tinted every conversation darkly. A sour expectation hung over all of them, and ill feelings lingered from the destruction of Sanctum. This, Sephtis had expected, and he encouraged as many as he could find who would listen.

He was not aware of it, but as he walked among them and spoke of his plans, he built a legend for himself among the goblin people. Already, they looked up to him, for he had saved them from certain death in the fires of Sanctum, but now they gained a measure of his character and found it attractive. His name was on every tongue throughout the camp. They respected his resilience, his sincerity, his determination.

"Here is a man that has not been beaten down by defeat, but who will stand strong in the face of adversity," they said. "Here is a leader that could draw us up by battered armor and set us upon our feet; here is a king that could unite us."

There was only the small matter of his species…

A raven passed through the wards of Azkaban in the afternoon, while Sephtis sat in his office with Sirius. They were discussing logistics, relating especially to the castle walls and repairs that needed to be completed before battles began to take place around the island. Sephtis noticed the creature peripherally, once it had already reached the castle. It circled overhead three times before diving towards his window, and it was then that he paused in the middle of his statement to watch as the cunning creature perched upon the stone sill, cocking its head and croaking inquisitively.

Sephtis stood and took a single step before the bird spread its wigs and divested itself of its cargo, which appeared at first glance to be nothing more than a thin leather slip. As it touched the stone, it grew in size until Sephtis could recognize it as a letter. The raven ducked its head, made a low _crr-ruck_ in its throat, and took flight once more.

"Interesting creature," Sirius mused as Sephtis glanced at the seal upon the letter that he had received. Sirius recognized it as well as Lord Azkaban returned to his desk, and his brows drew together between his eyes in a frown. "A letter with the royal seal?"

"Yes, I went and spoke with the Prime Minister yesterday," Sephtis replied as he scanned the contents of the letter.

"That gets you an in with the Crown these days? Damn, I should have tagged along..."

Laying the parchment out, Sephtis spared his godfather a long-suffering glance. "You were busy, if you'd care to remember, organizing the supply for the field hospital and cataloging our newly acquired vaults," he reminded the older man. He explained how he and Redtooth had attempted to convince the Prime Minister that there was an imminent threat to the British Isles, and outlined his intentions regarding fealty to the Queen.

"I can leverage the legal technicality of my sovereignty to promise the island and castle as a fief of her kingdom. In return, I hope she will pledge her support," Sephtis concluded. "By itself, it is a rather weak proposition because the land was originally part of her kingdom, but considering the grave threat posed by Voldemort and his mercenaries, I imagine that she will agree."

Sirius shrugged. "I am not intimately familiar with British royalty or the organization of the kingdom. Wizards have not concerned themselves with British law since the Statue of Secrecy separated the Wizengamot from the Crown."

"Evidently," Sephtis drawled. He returned his attention to the letter from the Queen. "She wants me to come to Buckingham Palace for a meeting. The day after tomorrow. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what she says."

"In the meantime, I thought you might like to know that there's a goblin looking for you. Female, grumpy, somewhat wrinkly…" Sirius trailed off.

"That tells me nothing," Sephtis griped halfheartedly. "All goblins are grumpy, and half of them are wrinkly. Was her name Michkal?"

"Probably," Sirius shrugged, standing up. He stretched, winced, and rubbed his sore legs. After a final exchange he heaved a sigh and departed to attend to yet another round of administrative tasks.

When he had been a prisoner, he had never imagined that freedom would feel so much like…work.


	35. Part 3 Chapter 8

Part 3 Chapter 8

The field hospital was quieter now than it had been yesterday, after the battle. Those who had been terribly wounded had either expired or stabilized by now, and the mad bustle that had consumed the nurses and healers had mostly subsided to a manageable routine. Sephtis stopped and spoke briefly with a few of the patients, asking after their progress, offering a few trivial spells to soothe pains or to cheer a dour mood. He was only just departing from his most recent conversation when a hand took him by the crook of his elbow and began to lead him determinately along the aisle.

He identified Michkal by her voice when she spoke. "You left the elf here; you deal with him. Runty thing. Won't shut up."

Sephtis ambled along behind the goblin with an amused grin on his face until he was summarily presented to the comically oversized bunk with its highly reluctant patient sitting up against the pillows. There were so many bandages wrapping the small creature's body that Lord Azkaban hardly recognized it as an elf. Michkal didn't bother to hang around after the elf's large, shimmering eyes landed upon the darkly robed wizard, and her departure was marked by distinctly irritated grumbling.

"Master Harry Potter," the elf intoned in an awed whisper. "It is you!"

"It is I," Sephtis agreed. "I go by the name of Sephtis, Lord of Azkaban, now."

The elf bobbed his head so frantically that Sephtis feared he might do himself some harm, but he was reluctant to intervene. He must have looked uncomfortable, for the elf immediately stopped and began gushing. "The rumors…they're true! Dobby should have known that nothing could kill the great Master Harry Potter! Oh, he should have known!"

Sephtis had a feeling that the elf would be wringing his ears if his hands had not been entirely encased by plaster casts. "What are you doing here, Dobby? How did you find yourself so wounded?" he asked these things to satisfy his own curiosity, but also in an attempt to divert the conversation from what was obviously distressing to the elf.

"Dobby heard of the terrible things that had happened at Hogwarts. Dobby _tried_ to stop Master Harry Potter, but stubborn wizard wouldn't listen. Dobby spent weeks at the Hoggy Warts, watching, but Dobby failed. Failed! When Dobby heard what had happened to Master Harry Potter, Dobby punished himself most severely, oh yes," the elf paused, with tears welling up in his large, yellow eyes. "But then Dobby heard that Azkaban had fallen. Dobby tried to come and see for himself, but bad master caught him."

"Your master caught you trying to come to Azkaban?" Sephtis clarified. "Who is your master?"

"Bad master being Lucius Malfoy, oh yes. Dobby can tell you now," the elf exclaimed with mounting excitement. "Bad master set me free. Thought Dobby would die, oh yes, but he didn't. Dobby is tougher than he looks."

Sephtis saw immediately the potential goldmine that he had at his very fingertips. "I am glad that you survived, Dobby," he said, sincerely. "I don't know what I did to inspire such reckless loyalty from you, but I will try to justify it as best as I can. What will you do now that you are free?"

If there was anything that might have put a damper on the elf's upbeat mood, this seemed to be it. From the height of euphoria, he fell catastrophically into sobs. It seemed that the elf knew what awaited him: a slow death as his magic depleted itself. Elves, at some point, had become dependent upon bonds with wizards.

Sephtis saw the hand of evil men in that, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

"Dobby doesn't know," the elf blubbered hysterically. "Dobby didn't think that he would ever be free of Bad Master. Without a master, Dobby be surely dying."

It seemed cruel for Sephtis to take advantage of the moment, and indeed he hesitated with the words upon the tip of his tongue. The elf obviously looked up to him, for some unknown reason, and appeared not entirely sane. However, he surely contained a wealth of information about the Malfoy family and their allies, information that could be used in the war effort. And, the elf would die without a bond, taking that information with him…

"Dobby does not have to die," Sephtis said slowly. "You will be _my_ elf. You must only agree to a few conditions."

It appeared that Dobby was stricken speechless, and could only nod his head.

"You must remember that I am Harry Potter no more. Sephtis, Lord Azkaban, is my only name." this didn't appear too troubling to the elf, who continued to nod his head. Sephtis figured that Dobby would have agreed to anything, but he also knew that the elf would follow his commands, so he continued. "You will agree to talk to me about things that you need. Feel free to advise me in whatever matter you might have an opinion in. I am not Lucius Malfoy, and shall never punish you. Am I clear?"

More nodding.

"Good," Sephtis finished with a smile. That was enough to establish the bond between them; he felt the magic settling between them already. "Welcome to Azkaban, Dobby."

For a moment, the elf only stared at him, but he immediately started sniffling and tears began to spill over the lids of his eyes. Sephtis reached out and touched the elf's cast for a moment, then straightened his back.

"I have to go," he said, leaning a bit upon his staff. "I don't want you working until your injuries have healed. I'll come back to check on you when I get the chance; I better not find you out of bed unless Michkal tells you otherwise."

Briefly, Dobby appeared disappointed, but he was such an emotional wreck that it was quickly overshadowed by other expressions, all warring for real estate in his eyes.

Sephtis had only just stepped from the hospital when Redtooth marched up to him and clapped his gauntlet against his cuirass in salute. "Lord," he greeted.

"Redtooth," Sephtis returned happily. "What can I do for you?"

"I have to talk to you about the King," the warrior replied, glancing around them briefly. Finding no others in earshot, he appeared to steel himself and bared his teeth in a grimace. "The Elders have declared no confidence in his rule. This means that…"

"They will choose a successor," Sephtis interrupted smoothly. "Who is it?"

"I was getting to that, impatient human," Redtooth admonished lightly. "The King, per tradition, challenged their decision. Kings have been ousted by the Elders before, many times, but never have they abdicated without challenging the decision. The Elders declared their intended successor earlier today."

Sephtis frowned slightly. "I had hoped to catch the proclamation. I have yet to meet your elders in person."

"Well, you'll be meeting them soon. They declared Lord Azkaban as the successor," Redtooth deadpanned.

Sephtis blinked, opened his mouth, and promptly closed it with a _snik_ of his teeth. All of the names that he had been considering as possible successors, given his limited contact with the goblin nation, flew out of the proverbial window with the force of a cannon blast. "What?"

"Yeah, that's what I said," Redtooth growled. "Not that I disagree. I just didn't expect those stuffy old bastards to actually _do it._ "

Sephtis didn't really understand that either. "You're saying that I have support in this?"

"What, you think that we don't recognize the single most important reason we're all stranded on this gods-forsaken island?" Redtooth answered him gruffly. "Everyone heard about your part in the battle. And the young nurses spread the report of your significant injuries to their friends. We recognize and honor those who shed blood for us. Besides, fiendfyre would have made quick work of us, regardless of what King Ithrigan might have told you. And facing the Dark Lord in single combat for the better part of five minutes is not something that any goblin could have done. You took the time to speak with all of the warriors that had fought by your side, this shows the quality of your character. The concern you showed for my comrades and your actions in the last two days show that you do not share wizardish prejudices toward goblins. Finally, your actions as Lord Azkaban prove that you are a conqueror and a leader worthy of our respect."

"I am not a _goblin_!" Sephtis protested.

Redtooth snorted. "Obviously. There's no meat on your damn bones," he replied bluntly. "You think we care? You ain't a dwarf, at least. Could be worse. The fact that you're a wizard, well…it certainly doesn't do you any favors. There'll be plenty of folks who will give you shit. Apparently the Elders think that you can handle it."

"I don't believe this," Sephtis muttered. "What could possibly have inspired this decision?"

"This is your land," Redtooth replied succinctly. "Your fiefdom. Sanctum is no more; there is no point in fighting over a dead title. If the elders appointed anyone else, then it would have been a challenge of your claim to the island. The warriors who saw you would never fight against you, and those who didn't aren't stupid enough to take up arms against Lord Azkaban. They'd be cut down by their own mother before they took two steps out of their tent. Such is your legendary reputation among the goblin people. Besides, I'm not sure any one of us would stand a chance against you in a fair fight."

"I would have respected a goblin king as a titular title, bereft of associated holdings, until such time as I could help to rebuild your city," Sephtis protested. "There would have been no need for conflict."

"Titular titles…" Redtooth spat in the dirt. "Only a human could talk such rot. A word of advice, don't ever say anything so asinine to the Elders. They'll tear you up and eat your fat for breakfast."

Sephtis scowled darkly. "I suppose this is the kind of respect I can look forward to from you, then?" he joked half-heartedly. "How am I supposed to know all these things about goblin culture? Your people are extremely insular, and their traditions are not documented in wizard libraries."

"The judicial duel is later today. You get to choose your second, someone who will tend to your warm corpse," Redtooth answered him. Despite his harsh words, Sephtis saw worry in his golden eyes. "He'd be your advisor if you somehow managed to best the King."

"Why do you assume that I will lose?" Sephtis asked, mildly offended.

Redtooth bared his teeth again. "Don't be a stupid wizard. You have to state what weapons will be allowed in the trial by combat. Its traditionally done without armor, but the Elders basically shit all over tradition by naming _you_ successor anyway, so say whatever the hell you want. One thing they won't stand for, however, is the use of magic. There will be a ward over the field of combat to tell them if you cast a spell, and the price for doing so is death."

"I am not entirely incompetent without my magic," Sephtis replied sharply. He thought for a moment, nodded his head decisively. "You are here, and we have bled together in battle. You will be my second."

Redtooth smacked his lips harshly with his strangely pointed tongue. "Yeah? Fine. We've got a lot to talk about before you go make a damn fool out of yourself. I think the elders were hoping to show that you were a typically incompetent, arrogant bastard of a wizard. They can't make any influential decisions when you've got such a powerful reputation."

"They will be sorely disappointed," Sephtis answered stonily. "I did not want this title, but I am willing to bear the responsibility now that they have chosen to test me with it."

Redtooth eyed him skeptically and launched into a bullet-pointed explanation of the things that would be expected of him in the coming ceremony. By the time he was finished, it was nearly noon and Sephtis was growing tired of standing and nodding his head like an imbecile. He was also hungry. Instead of interrupting whatever Redtooth was banging on about at the current moment, he simply tapped his staff against the dirt and started walking, keeping half his attention focused on the extremely brusque lecture he was receiving.

It was incredible that nearly three hours' worth of protocol was required for something as seemingly barbaric as a judicial duel. By the time he reached his office in the gatehouse, however, it appeared that Redtooth had runout of steam.

"Tell me about the duel," Sephtis ordered as he sat down behind his desk. "That is the most pressing matter, is it not?"

"It's straightforward," Redtooth replied. "You, as the title challenger, choose the weapon. I already told you there is no magic of any kind, including enchantments and potions. Neither combatant will wear armor or clothing, save for a loincloth. The duel continues until one of the combatants yields or is too injured to continue. It is not uncommon for people to die before the healers can get to them."

"There are no other restrictions?"

Redtooth shrugged. "It is slightly more complicated by the fact that you'll have an audience. You should make an effort to appear honorable. At the very least don't make a fool out of yourself. So what weapons do you know how to use?"

"I am best with a spear and a shield. I am familiar with a sword," Sephtis replied absently. "We might have a small problem."

Redtooth scowled. "What?"

"I cannot give up my cloak or my staff. They are bound to me."

"I've seen you without your cloak," Redtooth pointed out.

Sephtis scoffed. "Of course, I can dismiss the cloak, but I am never totally without it. You just can't see that it is there. The same is true for the staff."

He made no mention of the Stone, since that was stowed away in a pocket of the cloak and was entirely inconspicuous. The fact that it was almost more powerful than both the cloak and the staff combined didn't factor either way.

When El had said that the Stone provided Cadmus a glimpse into eternity, he had been trying to say, in words understandable for Harry Potter, that the Stone gave its holder some of the insight of God. It allowed a mortal to gain an idea of the immortal; it provided a spiritual perspective to the physical.

It made Sephtis' body a temple for the spirit of Death.

This was, of course, mystical nonsense, except for the fact that the spiritual perspective lacked the restrictions of the natural world. The Stone was _always_ speaking to Sephtis, but he could only understand it occasionally, much as he had only understood El's teachings at intervals. The important thing was that his reactions were amplified by the kind of precognition that the Stone provided him. The future played in his mind's eye moments before it played out in the physical world.

"Well, since the wards of Azkaban are anchored to your body, I imagine it will be impossible for the Elders to tell. Just don't forsake your honor by defeating Ithrigan with magic," Redtooth eventually replied, although he didn't look certain. "Regardless, I think you should choose the weapon you are most familiar with. Spear and shield is a combination that all goblins have experience with. But so is the sword. And with your bum leg, I think Ithrigan would cut you to shreds in a contest of the blade."

"My old injury does not trouble me as much as you might think," Sephtis said. "But I will follow your suggestion.."

Redtooth shrugged. "Eat something. I'll come back for you when the Elders are ready."

Sephtis watched the goblin depart and rolled his shoulders, feeling the lingering aches from his stitches. Instead of following Redtooth's rather brusque command, Sephtis knelt comfortably beside the desk, settling Antioch's Bane across his legs and closing his eyes.

He entered the healing trance by focusing upon his heartbeat and drawing upon the always present magic of Azkaban's wards. He breathed easily and relaxed as he felt its harsh power begin to burn across his back, doing swiftly what his body would have accomplished in weeks.

* * *

Michkal slathered Sephtis thoroughly with some kind of oil, growling dangerously and tugging the threads from the skin of his back as she went. When she had heard what the elders had decided, she had immediately gone to deal with his injuries from the battle at Sanctum, surprised to find that they were, at the very least, _beginning_ to scar. She had expected them to be a bloody mess. As she treated him she spat curses aimed at the Elder Council, muttering about how cruel they were to send an injured man into a blood trial.

Shirtless, Lord Azkaban was still kneeling, now with his back to the goblin healer. Redtooth watched the proceedings from the doorway with his arms crossed broodily over his breastplate. If he was impressed by the pulsing curse scar across the human's chest, it didn't show on his face.

"How bad is it?" the goblin asked when Michkal dropped her hands. It was only the words that betrayed his concern. Sephtis' pale skin gleamed in the somewhat dusty light provided by the office's only window, paler than porcelain. Gingerly, the wizard rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms, and he found that he could move freely save for a few twinges from his scabs.

"He'll be fine," Michkal replied. "Not that I'd normally allow anyone who has recently had their skin flayed from their back into a duel. However, the trial by blood cannot be refused."

Sephtis rose to his feet, only swaying briefly as his stiff leg gave him its usual trouble. "It is fine. These cuts will not slow me down."

"Well, we'd best be on our way. The proceedings begin when you arrive," Redtooth declared. Michkal gave Sephtis a doubtful glare when he glanced down at her, and he replied with a small smile.

"I can count on you to patch me up when this is over, then, kind healer?"

She scoffed and departed from his office without another word.

Sephtis walked as evenly as he could manage down to the courtyard of the castle, where he hesitated beside the dirt path that wound down through the eastern gatehouse, toward the village. The goblins had set up their camp there, declaring their intent to rebuild the houses, and Sephtis had a feeling that the duel would take place in the city square.

There was just one thing that gave him pause.

Very few people had seen his scars in their entirety. Sephtis wasn't sure, now that he stood poised to parade himself through a camp of two thousand goblins, that he was comfortable with the idea of a whole nation of people knowing of the wounds that marred his flesh. He imagined that he must look wretched, with the stripes across his back and the otherworldly fissure in his chest. Not to mention the somewhat pink blemishes where piercing hexes had cut him, or the thin lines that betrayed the touch of a cutting curse.

His face was possibly the only part of his body that had escaped scarring, and all that from relatively few battles. The scars were bad enough, besides his somewhat alarming thinness and the unnatural strength that he possessed because of his magic. His healing traces had built some of his muscles, but his ribs were still visible along his sides, and the rest of his body was similarly gaunt. He looked, deceptively, like a stiff breeze could sweep him away. Tendons bulged under his skin like corded rope, betraying the power of his unnatural form.

"What's the holdup?" Redtooth grumped from his side.

"I am ashamed of my scars," Sephtis admitted quietly. He didn't glance down at the goblin, for he knew that he would find no sympathy.

Redtooth said nothing for a long moment, obviously holding his tongue against his immediate scathing reply. "The goblin people will admire you for them," he pointed out at last.

"You're right," Sephtis agreed. He shook his head. "It wouldn't matter, even if they would despise them. I have a duty to fulfill. Come."

He had considered walking to the site of the duel with his staff, but Sephtis wanted to show the goblin elders that he did not rely upon it. He also hoped that knowledge of his old injury would cause Ithrigan to underestimate him when the time came for them to fight. So, he proceeded down to the gatehouse and ambled determinately through the darkened tunnel. Without the staff, his limp was pronounced but his pace was not in any way reduced.

He would regret that decision later, when the aches made themselves apparent, but for now he had an impression to make.

As he stepped out into the light, he was met by a crowd. It was oddly silent, as Redtooth had told him it would be, but Sephtis had not been prepared for the enormous weight that their collective gaze placed upon him. Goblins packed the street and jostled between the tents, all watching the castle fixedly for any sign of the announced challenger. When they saw him emerge, bare to the waist, with Redtooth standing proudly be his side, all motion ceased.

Sephtis allowed only the barest hesitation. He had been briefed by Redtooth about what he might expect from the crowd, and he knew not to show weakness. This was the part of the ceremony where the people made their opinions on the succession clear. Those who supported him would allow him to pass them by without fuss, but those who did not might give him trouble. Flexing his fingers and raising his chin, Lord Azkaban met the crowd without flinching.

At once, the goblins made room for him. Some of them forcibly removed a few of the more reluctant bystanders, and to this Sephtis spared hardly a glance. He recognized members of Redtooth's company violently clearing the space around them, and it nearly brought a smile to his lips to see them. A few of those who were wrestling in the crowd were still wearing slings over their arms or bandages across their wounds, and still they had come.

He had not expected them to bow as he passed, pausing in their vigorous defense to offer him an honor that few goblins would consider. He returned this with a nod and passed them by, following the road towards the dilapidated houses of the old village.

It was inevitable that there would be one who would not be dissuaded. Sephtis was a human, and there are many goblins who hatred for mankind goes far beyond rational thought. Sephtis came to a halt three paces from one such goblin, a younger example of his kind, and he bared his teeth in a very threatening smile.

The goblin spat at his feet. He obviously did not expect Sephtis to know what to do, or perhaps he considered the human too spineless to do it, but Lord Azkaban didn't even hesitate. He closed the distance with a surprisingly agile dash, caught the goblin by the throat, and heaved the struggling creature from his feet. Sephtis held the goblin there, with his feet kicking uselessly above the ground, and gnashed his teeth as Redtooth had advised.

Anyone who simply glanced at Sephtis might have said that he was too thin to be strong. Indeed, he was an emaciated man, although he was tall in stature. His bones were pronounced, and it seemed impossible that there could be enough muscle there for him to perform this feat of strength. But what muscle he did have rippled visibly beneath his skin as he heaved the protesting goblin against the hard ground, shaking out his arms as he stood above his fallen opponent.

Then Sephtis rolled his shoulders, straightened his back, and continued walking. The goblins who had been standing near to the one who had challenged him took turns pushing the fallen creature roughly back into the dirt as he scrambled to regain his feet. By the time he was standing once more, Sephtis was long gone.

No one else stood in his way.

Sephtis reached the center of the deserted village and found that the rubble of one of the buildings had been made into a makeshift balcony, upon which there stood ten wizened goblin elders. They sized up their chosen successor as he broke free from the crowds that had pressed near to the town square, and a few of them took the time to scowl impressively at Redtooth as he sauntered alongside the wizard.

Sephtis saw King Ithrigan standing in the square already, likewise bare to the waist and unarmed. There was hatred in the king's eyes so powerful that Sephtis found it difficult to meet his eyes, but he managed the task until his attention was drawn away by the voice of one of the elders.

"So, you have arrived, Lord Azkaban," he called down from his perch. "I have to admit I am surprised that you found any goblin faithless enough to agree to serve as your second."

Sephtis folded his hands together behind his back, said nothing. Redtooth could defend his own honor, if he felt the need to do so.

"Well then, let us get this over with. Challenger! Choose the weapon that will spill your blood!" the elder spat the words like curses.

Sephtis glared at the wizened old crow. "Spear and shield," he replied.

The elder jerked his head to the side, and the crowd admitted two shield-bearers to pass into the town square, both holding an identical set of a shield and a spear. Sephtis saw the length of the lance that they provided him and sighed—it was much too short for a man of his height. Still, he received the weapon and slid his arm through the strap of the shield.

"Now, with all those present as witnesses, we may begin. Ithrigan, son of Athragan, your rule has been contested by this council because you allowed Sanctum to burn while it was under your sworn protection. Here, Lord Azkaban, has been chosen as a challenger for the title because it is his land that we now inhabit as refugees, and it is his efforts to which we owe our lives. So, by trial of blood, one of you may now claim the title of King. Face each other, and salute."

Sephtis clapped his spear against the flat of his shield and aimed the gleaming point across the square as he turned. Ithrigan bared his teeth and stamped the ground with the blunted butt of his spear.

The ceremonial weapon was a simple bronze-shod wooden shaft with a leaf-shaped point that was about as long as Sephtis' hand and half as wide. The spear shaft itself was only five feet in length, and a lead counterweight was affixed to its base by the simple expedient of a dowel and a wrapping of twine. For grips, the spear was simple bound by strips of scaled hide. As a whole, it was an unremarkable weapon, and didn't appear to be very sharp.

The shield was just as simple. It was round, with a half-moon divot in the top, and was fixed to his arm by a sturdy strap. The shield was more of a buckler in Sephtis' hands, due to his height, but it was correspondingly lighter than the larger round shields that he had practiced with.

"The trial by blood does not end until one combatant yields or is incapable of contesting the title," the elder intoned. "Begin."

Sephtis held the spear towards its end and laid the point in the divot of his shield, sinking into a crouch as he advanced slowly across the square. Ithrigan had chosen a reverse grip, and stood with his shoulders square. His spear was angled over his right shoulder, poised either to throw or to thrust.

Without a secondary weapon, there was no chance that Ithrigan would throw the spear. Not yet. And with a reverse grip, he limited the range of his thrusts. In that stance, Sephtis could expect him to use his shield as a bludgeon to close the distance, perhaps in an attempt to bully Sephtis into complicated footwork.

They met in the center of the square, surrounded by anxious faces, and it appeared for a moment that the whole island was holding its breath. Sephtis skirted to the right, Ithrigan to the left. The sun peered through the clouds and gleamed from the bloodthirsty bronze spearheads. Ithrigan took a step forward, Sephtis held his ground. His heart pounded powerfully in his chest and blood roared in his ears.

 _Pulse…Pulse…Pulse_ Sephtis felt that curious excitement in his blood, hotter than basilisk venom, and he remembered what El had said about the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. _Pulse…Pulse…Pulse._ It dragged in his blood, a familiar ache, and a dark smile pulled at his lips. He rolled his wrist, bounced on the balls of his feet.

Sephtis perceived the coming attack seconds in advance. It happened in an instant. Ithrigan launched himself forward, leading with his shield. Sephtis sidestepped and punched his own shield forward, catching the upper half of Ithrigan's shield as he passed. The sound of the wooden discs colliding reverberated across the silent square as Ithrigan spun on his heel, bringing the wicked point of his spear about in a deft jab.

Sephtis caught the thrust on his shield, and turned it downwards, keeping his spear point in line with his guard. His counter was a clean downward cut that opened a long gash across Ithrigan's thigh. The goblin king smashed forward with his shield, driving Sephtis back and forcing his guard high. The spear skittered between them, catching briefly on the shield.

Bright, crimson blood welled from the cut on Ithrigan's thigh, running in thin lines along the contours of his skin.

Shifting his grip, Sephtis caught his own spear in a reverse grip and angled it over Ithrigan's shield. With his height advantage, this was a simple task. The spear pushed forward, only to be caught on the rim of Ithrigan's shield as he threw his arm up to deflect. The edge of the blade pressed against the goblin's cheek, caught, and Sephtis deflected a counterstrike with his own shield, circling towards the right again and wrestling with his trapped spear.

He paused, turned a third thrust with his shield, and dropped. He used his shield to crush Ithrigan's knee. The goblin, already moving forward with his thrust, staggered into the crouching wizard, who had scored a cut across Ithrigan's cheek by levering his trapped spear upon the shield. With the spear angled across his chest, and his weight bearing down, Ithrigan surged up, catching the king in the gut with one shoulder and hauling the goblin off his feet.

Lord Azkaban slammed his opponent onto the ground and drove the butt of his spear into the king's belly, forcing the air from his lungs. If the spear had been sharp at both ends, it would have been a lethal wound. As it was, Ithrigan surged up with his own spear, which was easily knocked aside, and he was forced to deflect a second thrust from Sephtis as he scrambled back along the ground.

Sneering openly, Sephtis allowed Ithrigan to regain his feet. Silently, he thanked El for providing him with the precognition necessary for him to keep pace with the centuries old warrior king.

The goblin was bleeding from his leg and the cut on his face, but neither of those were deep enough to win the duel on their own. Still, by the increasingly tense atmosphere in the spectating crowd, Sephtis determined that he had already exceeded their expectations.

It was difficult to make progress against an opponent armed with a spear and shield. The shield, used effectively, frustrated the usual avenues of approach, and the spear was a constant threat. Used together, it was nearly impossible to land a solid hit on a single opponent. Sephtis, who had trained with Death himself, was considerably more difficult to approach than the average warrior. Ithrigan, who had lived for hundreds of years and probably fought more battles than the number of Sephtis' meals, wielded his spear as masterfully as might be expected of someone with centuries of experience. It was possible that the goblin king favored another weapon, but it didn't show in his impeccable technique.

After being so deliberately foiled in his advance, Ithrigan took his time making the second. Sephtis timed his backstep with the goblin's advance to measure the distance between them, searching for the favorable interval which he could use to strike. Ithrigan must have gotten the measure of Sephtis' reach, for he continually pushed the boundaries of his steps, coming closer and forcing Sephtis to circle or backstep or else give up his initiative. It came down to speed and reach: who could reach farther and who could react faster? Sephtis clearly had superior reach, so Ithrigan had to rely upon distance and dexterity.

The goblin king must have realized that Sephtis was predicting his actions, because he devoted his energy now to preparing multiple avenues of attack at once. He remained unpredictable even to one who could see the near future. Sephtis admired his skill and determination, as well as the experience that must have bene required for him to think two or three steps ahead in the middle of a fight.

They danced in this way for some time. Sephtis, who was hampered in offence by his leg, didn't dare make a pass at the goblin, and Ithrigan never found the opening he was looking for. Eventually, as they shuffled their feet in the dust, ebbing near and far, Ithrigan must have decided to take a chance on even footing.

He ducked his shoulder, used his shield as a screen, and shot forward in a blur. Sephtis swept to the side, searching for the high thrust, and Ithrigan's spear revealed itself, going low. Desperately, Sephtis swept the haft of his spear across his body, angling his shield in a crushing blow. Ithrigan expertly paused in his thrust, allowing the wizard to open himself up by momentum, and then struck true. The spear pierced the calf of Sephtis' left leg and tore sideways through flesh.

At the same time, Sephtis' shield cracked across Ithrigan's forehead and snapped his head backwards. Roaring in pain, Sephtis rolled his wrist across his spear, seized it in an underhand grip, and retaliated against the staggering goblin. His injured leg refused to support his weight, and his lunge became a wild stumble, but even in that chaos, he managed to shove Ithrigan's shield aside with the recovery of his own, driving his spear through the gap between them.

Ithrigan, who must have sensed the danger, turned and tried to throw Sephtis across his chest. The point of the wizard's spear caught the side of Ithrigan's ribcage, driven by Sephtis' weight, and the goblin had planted his foot in order to turn.

For a moment they were frozen, unbalanced in the act of falling, and then Ithrigan toppled over his planted foot. Sephtis' spear sunk deep into the goblin's chest as they crashed to the ground, briefly scrapping in a tangle of flying limbs, before Sephtis was thrown over his fallen opponent to crash onto his knees, yanking fiercely upon his embedded spear.

The goblin, who had been laying upon the weapon, was thrown onto his back when the wizard wrenched at the shaft of his spear, driving the wicked point deep and twisting through vital flesh.

"Curse you!" Ithrigan bellowed as his body was forcefully turned again by the spear buried in his chest. His voice sounded wet and ragged, but his eyes were blazing with hate as he glared across at his kneeling opponent. He threw his spear haphazardly, screaming terribly as the motion wrenched Sephtis' weapon from his chest. The wizard knocked the poorly aimed projectile aside and withdrew his red, gleaming spear. Leaning upon it as he knelt in the sand, he watched as blood poured from the terrible wound in Ithrigan's side. He knew how to recognize a lethal injury from his training with Death, and so he recognized it now.

The demand was on his tongue, but he said nothing. Redtooth had told him never to insist upon a yield, no matter how terrible the injuries of his opponent. It was a grave insult and a sign of cowardice. So, with slow movements, Sephtis levered himself to his feet. His lame leg was screaming in protest as it took the majority of his weight, but the wizard didn't dare to stand upon the calf which had been cut.

Ithrigan had crawled away from him, spitting blood and curses into the dust. At last, he threw his shield aside and reared up upon his knees, revealing his blood-streaked chest to the gray sun. "Kill me!" he howled. "You don't have the guts, _wizard._ "

Crossing the distance was a daunting task, but Sephtis managed it. With three slow, precarious steps, he closed the gap and stood before the dying goblin.

"It didn't have to be this way," he whispered. Ithrigan spat blood upon his feet.

Sephtis, who had been leaning upon his spear, moved so quickly that no one really saw what happened. Ithrigan's head snapped to the side and teeth flew from his mouth as he sprawled out in the dirt. A few of the spectators drew sharp breaths when they saw this, but no words were spoken. It was forbidden for spectators to speak during the blood trial.

Sephtis drove the point of his spear into Ithrigan's neck at the base of the spine. It was a deftly-aimed blow, and it came before the fallen king could react. His body twitched where it laid in the dust, and Lord Azkaban, who stood frozen above him, felt the soul depart from mortal flesh as the king's blood was emptied out to the earth. Sephtis released a gust of air and sagged visibly as he wrenched his weapon free and held it closer to his body. He leaned there, ignoring the blood that was smeared across his shoulder, and stared down at his fallen opponent for some time, breathing in the pregnant silence that followed the goblin's death.

At long last, he turned towards the house where the elders sat and turned his face to the sky.

"King Ithrigan is dead," he declared in a voice that carried clearly across the town square. He watched, fiercely satisfied, as the elders hesitated in the traditional response.

"Long live King Sephtis!" an elder that had not spoken before returned the call, rising from his seated position to aim his crooked finger at the wizard.

The spectating crowd seemed almost incapable of speech. Sephtis's brow pinched together as he glanced around himself, blinking past a wave of particularly sharp pain, but the silence only lasted a moment. Then a cheer rose up which was so thunderous, so incredible, that it almost drove him from his feet.

He saw Michkal slip from the crowd and rush forward, stopping briefly beside King Ithrigan to press her fingers against his neck. Sephtis knew already that Ithrigan was dead.

She came nearer to her new king, then, walking like someone approaching a wounded beast. When she was near enough, she knelt before him and leaned toward his pierced calf.

At once, Sephtis lowered himself. This spectacle stifled the tumultuous cries of the crowd more surely than any declaration he might have made, and all eyes were now focused upon him. Here was their King, sitting on his haunches before a healer. He did not arrogantly stand above her as she washed his feet, or attempt to impress them by giving a speech in spite of his injuries; instead, he allowed the healer to treat his wound without command or complaint. It was not an easy task, and time seemed to pass them by, but still the crowd remained, entranced by this break of tradition.

They were waiting for their King to accept the honor and responsibility. They were waiting for him to inspire them with a speech, to give them direction and purpose. They were waiting for him to do what was expected of a King. But Sephtis did none of these things. He was a wounded man, a weary warrior, not a King.

He didn't know how to be a King, so he was forced simply to be Sephtis. But who was Sephtis, really?

It was a terrible wound, although it was not a mortal one. The spear had partially severed the Achilles tendon as it passed through the muscles of the calf, and without the use of magic it would likely have made for a chronic injury. Michkal lathered her fingers with a medicinal salve and pressed them into the cut.

Sephtis breathed in through his nose and closed his eyes against the pain. Once she had packed the wound, Michkal wrapped it tightly with a white cloth and sat back upon her ankles.

"Thank you," Sephtis said as the hard edge of pain was dulled by the cool numbness of the salve.

She nodded and stayed where she sat. King Sephtis shifted his spear, twisting its butt into the dirt, and offered a lopsided smile. "Will you help me to my feet?"

The goblin matron did not appear to know what to say. So she said nothing. She hesitated as she stood, quickly offering her arm. Sephtis discarded his shield and took hold, pulling himself up. Once he was standing, he laid his hand upon her shoulder and balanced himself between his spear and the healer.

He faced the elders then, eyes flashing, and threw the spear onto the ground at his feet. Spreading his arms, he summoned his staff and cloak, straightening his shoulders as the comforting fabric embraced him gently from behind. A rush of whispers scattered throughout the crowd at this display of magic, and only when utter silence had settled over them once again did Sephtis speak.

"I have fought for this nation," he began, in a voice that carried clearly through the stifling afternoon air. "I have bled in battle alongside her warriors. I stood against wizards that sought your absolute extinction. And now, as you have seen, I have cast down your king and proven myself worthy of his title. Know this; I did none of these things because I desired a crown or a throne. There is no earthly wealth or power that could entice me. I fought for you because it was right, I bled for you because it was my duty, and now I have risen up before these elders because I was chosen."

He paused for a moment and pierced the apparent leader of the elder council with his eyes. "You believed that I would embarrass myself. Or perhaps you expected that I would spit upon your traditions in arrogance. Well, I am a wizard and I shall always be a wizard, so I won't bother apologizing for it. But allow me to address some of the concerns that you undoubtedly have, now that I have proven myself here in blood.

"I could no more despise the goblin people any than I despise my own kind, for it was my own people who cast me into the dark pits and left me to die. Many of my brethren have created of themselves abominations by dealing in wickedness. The rest are too weak to stand up for themselves or anybody else. Goblins, however, have always treated with me honorably. So, I am not a king that will impose his own laws or his foreign culture upon you; I have no loyalty to my own nationality or the traditions of wizard-kind. I am not, nor shall I ever be, a reformist.

"I am a warrior. I am a _crusader_. There is a war to be fought and won, and I have no time for etiquette or protocol. With your help, I will restore your nation to its former glory, set right the wrongs of history, and lay the foundations of a long and fruitful partnership between my people and yours. But first, there is blood to spill and tears to shed. I ask only for your support, not for your love. That is all."

Lifting his head in a defiant nod, Sephtis turned on his heel and ambled away from the corpse of the former king. His cloak, which had suddenly appeared upon his body as he spoke, swept out behind him like a wing and snapped sharply in the silence, and all eyes followed his progress as he walked. He waded into the crowd without ceasing, and he was not challenged on his walk back to the castle; any goblin that had harbored doubts as to his suitability had been sufficiently reassured.

Only the elders who had nominated him were dissatisfied by the outcome of the trial. Of the six, only one remained in the dilapidated town square, kneeling beside the body of his son with his eyes closed. His hands were clasped tightly around the shaft of the spear that had slain him, and his old bones shook with silent sobs until the sun fell away and the moonlight kissed his wrinkled brow. Only then did he rise, with the murderous weapon in his hands, and return to his tent at the center of the refugee camp.


	36. Part 3 Chapter 9

Part 3 Chapter 9

Sephtis breathed deeply through his nose and held the air, savoring the crisp sensation of dawn. The sun had only just begun to peel back the curtains of the night, and as the sky brightened by degrees the ocean below began to scintillate like a blanket of jewels. Far below his feet, where the water crashed thunderously against the cliffs, Sephtis saw the jagged rocks upon which Lord Azkaban had been broken by the demons he had summoned.

The pale monarch was feeling much the same as that old jarl had: completely overwhelmed. He felt like a poseur, like a blind man fumbling through a crowded city.

"I am a young man," he said, to the wind. His shaggy black hair was plucked and tousled by it in response. "A scarred and crippled wizard. How can I be King?"

He did not expect a response. Long past were the days where El would step from the thin, whispering air and speak to him in person. His dreams were filled with aimless vision and precognition rather than exhaustive simulation. And the Resurrection Stone, well…it was a constant weight in his heart, like an anchor of the soul. It spoke to him, always. It often seemed that his thoughts were not his own.

He startled so fiercely that he nearly toppled over the cliff when he heard a familiar voice at his side. "You have a good example to follow," it said. Sephtis was almost afraid to turn his head and face the speaker, for he doubted that it could possibly be El himself. With deliberate motions, he squared his shoulders and glanced over his shoulder.

The dark, regal being was, indeed, standing beside him and looking out over the sea. "It is beautiful, is it not? The ocean. Untamed and wild, powerful. Many men have set out from comforting shores to subdue her, and she swallows them up. Ah, but she is a mercurial thing. Some do, indeed, return triumphant, prideful in their success. Some are suffered to pass over her waves. What separates the living from the dead?"

"You speak in riddles," Sephtis replied. "Or, rather, you say many words but nothing at all."

"Do you doubt me so?" El asked, deceptively quiet. "How have I wronged you, that your anger simmers so visibly in your words?"

Sephtis stepped away from the cliff and watched the sun as it peeked over the horizon. "I am like one of your drowning men. I am expected to lead the goblins to war; but I am nothing more than a broken shell of a man. And you have left me aimless."

When he finished, he hung his head and bit his tongue to prevent harsher words from escaping. He was trembling already, just from the things he had already said. He was angry, but he was not foolish enough to think that he could curse God without punishment…

"Do you think that I will strike you down for revealing to me your heart?" El asked, sounding more disappointed by this than Sephtis' anger. "Do you not know me? Or have you only forgotten?"

"I don't know what to think," Sephtis replied quietly. "I don't know what I am doing. How am I supposed to take these people to war against an enemy as cunning and strong as Voldemort, who has the aid of Demons. His wisdom is far beyond my own; his allies control powers outside of my ability to imagine. In the meantime, I am supposed to meet the Queen in less than a day. How do I address her? What do I say? How do I explain our current circumstances? I make for a fool of a king. It would have been better if it was I, and not Ithrigan, who had been stricken down in the trial of blood."

El reached out and took Sephtis by his shoulder. The heat that suffused the Lord Azkaban in that moment was so intense it brought him to his knees. "Do you think I am unwise?"

The pause was long enough that it begged an answer. "No, of course not," Sephtis gasped, turning his face up. Looking at El was much the same as looking at the brightening sun, for his eyes blazed with gold fire and his very skin seemed to burn with blinding intensity.

"Then why do you continue to slight me? You deride yourself, and by extension my decision to raise you as my champion. So, do you think that I chose poorly?"

Sephtis could only shake his head. Even as he did so, he managed a final retort. "I am inexperienced and young…"

"You are my chosen one," El interrupted him, drawing him forcefully to his feet. "I taught you everything that you know. I have raised you from death time and time again. You only defeat yourself with doubting."

"I am no king," Sephtis replied more sharply than he intended.

El leaned forward until their foreheads were nearly touching, and the heat intensified until it was almost unbearable. "You have done very well so far. You lead your soldiers with compassion and wisdom, and you have gained the support of a nation through your acts of strength and humility. When your own knowledge reaches its end, you have, at your fingertips, a greater adviser than any mortal man could hope to find. For I am the King of kings, I raise rulers up and I tear them down. The powers of this earth are from my good will derived. And I have sworn a covenant with _you._ "

Sephtis pulled away, but was held in place by the vice-grip of his master. "Where were you when Sanctum fell?" he cried against the heat. "Where was your wisdom when I failed to convince the Prime Minister of the threat to his people? What use was my training as the warriors who fought and bled for the survival of their people died in their beds?"

"You despair over _nothing,_ " El exclaimed, finally releasing Sephtis so that he staggered back. "I was with you, stubborn child. Or do you think, in arrogance, that all of the things that you have done were done through your own power alone? Must I hold your hand at every moment like a staggering babe? Pull yourself together. Do you think that this war will be won with complaints flapping uselessly in the wind?"

Sephtis scoffed and brushed his robes free of dirt. He reclaimed his staff but hissed as it burned his hand, and it would not release him. His fingers were locked around its length, even as his skin was seared. "You are allowed your anxiety, young champion of mine. But when your doubts near the point of cowardice and despair, then you will earn for yourself my contempt. Do not be afraid, but take heart. There is strength in you that you have yet to find, and I do not give my champions a task that they cannot complete."

Sephtis set his jaw, said nothing. El narrowed his blazing eyes, rising up above the ground. "Go. Your duties await."

Then the god was gone. The gaunt man stared out over the sea, feeling much like a sailor who was adrift at sea, before turning and beginning the slow march back to his castle.

* * *

Court Wizard Aaron Thistleburn straightened his back when he saw one of his men open the door and gesture for his guest to pass him. Then Lord Azkaban, the legendary wizard who had cast down the dementors, disarmed Albus Dumbledore, and fought alongside the goblins of Sanctum against the forces of the unstoppable Dark Lord, stepped across the threshold and his emerald eyes cut across the pompous ornamentation of the sitting room to rest upon Thistleburn's wizened features. The court wizard wasn't an ancient man, like Dumbledore, but he wore his years better. A crisp black and gray suit, matched his salt and pepper hair.

Compared to the newcomer, Thistleburn might as well have been a fossil.

It didn't look like Lord Azkaban could be older than twenty. Judging by this painfully thin build, he had suffered greatly in his life, and his flinty eyes only reinforced that impression. In spite of sharp edges, there was a certain vitality bout him that could only be youth. He walked confidently, in spite of his limp, and he held in his long, pale fingers a staff that appeared at first to be a simple length of ebony wood. Thistleburn knew better.

Here was the Elder Wand. An artifact of great, terrible power. He shuddered just looking at it and the man who held it like a walking stick, and he wondered how a man who was little more than a boy could have defeated Dumbledore. Aaron had fought alongside Dumbledore in the war against Grindelwald, he had seen the Chief Warlock's unmatched strength and skill.

Lord Azkaban came to stand before the court wizard and bowed shallowly at the waist. His eyes never left Thistleburn's face, and once he had straightened himself, he swept the hem of his cloak behind him with an arm and cast his eyes about the room pointedly. "Good morning," he said. "I am here, answering the summons of Her Majesty."

"Come," Aaron beckoned, turning his back upon the younger man and beginning to walk. He felt a chill dance along his spine starting at the back of his neck, and he pointedly restrained himself from glancing over his shoulder.

He felt like he had turned his back upon a jaguar rather than a man.

They passed through several rooms before they reached the place where the Queen was waiting for them. It was an audience chamber on the side of a larger, imperial setting, a place with a more modest throne. She did not rise as they entered, and Lord Azkaban did not kneel. he approached the foot of the throne and bowed in the same manner as he had done for Thistleburn.

"Queen Elizabeth of England," he greeted her. Like an equal.

"Lord Azkaban," the Queen replied slowly. "Why do you not kneel?"

The pale Lord straightened his shoulders. "I have only one master, and it is not you, your Majesty," he answered quietly. Aaron bit his tongue and glanced nervously at the Queen, knowing that she could call upon laws older than the palace itself to bring this brazen wizard to his knees.

"Who is your master?" she asked instead, looking at the young man intently. Thistleburn saw that she had heeded his warnings; it was unwise to make an enemy of a powerful wizard.

"I am the servant of my god, the King of Kings," Lord Azkaban replied boldly.

The Queen said nothing for a moment, gazing intently at the man before her. "You have come here today to bargain," she eventually spoke, closing her eyes and leaning slowly back in her throne. "You have claimed a title that has been lost for hundreds of years, seized my land by force, and now you come to me expecting my favor? Tell me why I should not bring my armies to your island and take back what is rightfully mine?"

Lord Azkaban's eyes hardened. "My claim to the island is older and stronger than any claim of yours," he replied sharply. "It is upheld my magic. I have assumed the mantle that Lord Azkaban, noble of the Denes, had discarded upon his death. If you wish to make an enemy of me, know that you condemn not only yourself but both of us to absolute eradication by the monster known to you as Lord Voldemort. You are not so foolish, I think, to begin a war that will soon begin to burn along two fronts."

"Yes, Lord Voldemort. I have heard what you claim about him," Queen Elizabeth replied slowly. "But I have no corroborating reports from the Ministry about any impending attack. His name has not been mentioned in years."

"He is here. In England," Lord Azkaban replied. "He has mustered for himself an army of ambitious mercenaries. Your own Ministry has long been corrupt, ineffective, and dishonest. Half of the Wizengamot joined Voldemort's forces when he arrived in England."

When Elizabeth glanced toward her court wizard, he was forced to nod just slightly. Enough to tell her that Lord Azkaban was telling the truth.

"So," The Queen replied. "Now he has an army and you do not. Am I to assume you have come to warn me out of the goodness of your heart?"

"I have come to make a plea for the lives of my countrymen. I am not so arrogant to think that I can defeat Lord Voldemort and his followers alone. The war that is coming will consume us, wizard and muggle alike. It will be more terrible than any conflict that you have before seen, for our enemies now are not of mere flesh and blood. Voldemort has allied himself with denizens of void and shadow," Lord Azkaban intoned. "He will bring forth horrors which have not corrupted the surface of this Earth for thousands of years. Alone, we will die. Tyranny and suffering will spread from the isles like a poison, claiming the lives of millions. You have the power to stop this, your Majesty."

"Bold words," the Queen spoke immediately as Lord Azkaban subsided. She rose to her feet, then, drawing her crimson cloak about her shoulders and gesturing dismissively. "A fire in London is no cause for such worry. Do not think to hold a knife to my throat and demand concessions from me, wizard. I'll not hear another word about Voldemort or his armies; let us talk about _you._ "

"As you wish," Lord Azkaban replied stonily, drawing his staff near to his chest. "I came here to offer my allegiance to the crown. I came here to lend my staff and my sword to you in the coming war. Yet you refuse me out of ignorance. Wounded pride blinds you. What would it take, then, for you to believe? Shall all of London burn before you recognize the threat?"

"For a man coming to beg, you have some nerve," Elizabeth replied sharply. "I know, Sephtis of Azkaban, why you have come. There is no food on that island, and no drinkable water. A dusty old castle and dry rock! So, you come here, proclaiming doom and woe, hoping that _I_ shall sustain you, relying on your promise of aid. England needs no aid from you, or anybody. One dark wizard cannot possible hope to bring a nation to its knees, no matter his allies. Step back, and think about your position, sir. What do you have, really, to bargain with?"

Lord Azkaban barked a laugh which sounded more like a wheezing cough. "You are a fool," he said between breaths. He gestured to Thistleburn sharply, "Here, you have a wizard. Ask him how easy it would be for magic to destroy a city like London. An average wizard with some small amount of training could raze half a block in an hour, and Voldemort could bring down this city in less than that. Do not toy with fire far more dangerous than you can imagine, your Majesty. By the time you have been burned, it will be far too late for me to save you."

The Queen drew back as if she had been struck. "Is that a threat?" she whispered.

"No," Lord Azkaban answered. "I am trying to _protect_ you."

"I have received no evidence that Lord Voldemort is a threat to my country. _You,_ on the other hand, have already seized English soil and set yourself up as some kind of island king," the Queen summarized. "I have no bargains to make with you, _Lord_ Azkaban. Surrender yourself at once and submit to the laws of this country."

"I refuse," was the immediate reply. Thistleburn took a step back as a pulse of red light traveled the length of the black staff in Lord Azkaban's hands.

"We have nothing more to say to each other," the Queen dismissed. Her eyes settled on a point over the young wizard's shoulder, and with a gesture of her hand, Hell broke loose.

Six wizards suddenly discarded their invisibility and took aim. Lord Azkaban's face twisted into a scowl as he drew his staff before him and held it above the ground. The first spell which cut through the air of the antechamber was a white cutting hex, aimed at Lord Azkaban's legs. It glanced harmlessly from an invisible shield and careened past the Queen's stoic features to crash explosively into the marble columns behind the throne. A barrage of spells cascaded from the wands of the court wizards, all of them harmlessly deflected by the gaunt man in their midst. A few of the stray spells collided with a shimmering gold barrier between the Queen and the violence, but the rest tore along the walls and floor, throwing dust and shrapnel through the air.

"ENOUGH!" Lord Azkaban boomed in a voice like thunder. A flash of light so excruciatingly bright that Aaron's eyes literally burned in pain rendered him blind. He staggered away from the dark shadow that had been seared into his vision by the silhouette of Lord Azkaban, tripping over a stair to collapse upon the floor as the sounds of battle subsided.

"You will regret this decision, before the end," Lord Azkaban said into the silence. An explosion shook the ground, followed by slow, unhurried footsteps, and no one stood to contest him as Lord Azkaban departed from the palace through the new hole that he had blown through an exterior wall.

By the time Thistleburn's eyes recovered, the rest of his wizards had only just begun to pick themselves up from the floor, each of them speechless as they saw the devastation hat had been wrought upon the palace. The Queen, who remained behind her enchanted shield, was looking directly at Aaron when he turned to face her.

"I'm afraid I've made a terrible mistake," she said quietly.

* * *

Sephtis fell heavily into his chair and heaved a great sigh, deliberately ignoring Redtooth as the goblin hesitantly stepped into his office.

"That bad?"

The wizard eyed his diminutive advisor with baleful eyes. "I think I've made a terrible mistake."

Redtooth scratched his chin carefully and nodded, "Can't be that bad. What did you do?"

"I think I declared war on England."


	37. Part 3 Chapter 10

Part 3 Chapter 10

Sirius Black stood uncomfortably beside a long, conjured stone table which was surrounded by five stony-faced goblins. He recognized none of them, except for the matron that had tended to Sephtis in the field hospital, but even then there was some small difficulty introduced by the fact that another goblin matron was present at the table. They all looked very much the same to him, so he relied entirely upon Sephtis for social cues. Given the fact that the pale lord was a somewhat quiet, stoic character, Sirius ended up with little idea of how he was supposed to act. So, he held his silence.

A painful thirty seconds passed before Sephtis cleared his throat and the quiet murmurs of the assembled advisors immediately died out. "Good morning," he began, eliciting a subtle scoff from a few of the assembled goblins. It _was_ a rather…human expression. "Let's get down to business, then. We're here to make sure that the transition between the late King Ithrigan's rule and the beginning of my own is as swift and painless as possible. We walk the knife-edge. At any time, the Ministry could collapse and the war will begin in earnest. Before that happens, there are tasks set before us, all vital. Before we get to these things, however, I want an introduction from each of you and a report of the current circumstances."

He glanced meaningfully to Sirius. The older wizard was still gaping at him for the implication that he was a King of some description, but as soon as the rest of the council was looking at him he hastily cleared his throat. "Yes, well," he waffled uselessly for a moment. "My name is Sirius Black. I am Lord Sephtis' steward, responsible for the castle and its inhabitants. Currently, there are fifty-six people residing in the castle. Our stores of food and water are beginning to dwindle, and all of us are in desperate need of clothing, bedding, and toiletries. The castle's defenses are in excellent condition, although a small section of the southeastern wall is beginning to crumble as the cliffs below are eroded."

Sephtis nodded. "The issue of supplies will come up again, I'm sure. For now…" he gestured to the goblin at Sirius left side.

The wizened creature laid his hands upon the table. All the goblins were standing on stepstools so that the table was at a comfortable height for everyone, but he still had to look up to see Sephtis' face. "I am Bullhorn. I am a skilled weapon-smith and armor-smith, and I am responsible for equipping the nation's warriors for battle. Currently, I lack the facilities and resources to ply my craft. I took the liberty of performing a check of arms and armor, and I have found the current state of your forces to be miserable. The last battle ruined a good portion of the equipment, and most of our crossbows were lost with the atrium of Gringott's Bank. Those weapons that remain lack ammunition or require repair."

Sephtis nodded his head, and Michkal held her hand to her chest as she introduced herself. "I am a healer, responsible for operating and maintaining the field hospital. Currently, there are twenty-seven injured warriors resting in the hospital. We have completely run out of a variety of potions and salves that are necessary for proper treatment of curse wounds, and our supply of thread and cloth for stitches and bandages is low. We also have no supply of clean water and a lack of surgical implements."

Sirius checked out after that, already understanding the general state of affairs. They were desperate. The next goblin, Gunhilde, reported that there were two thousand six hundred forty-six civilian goblins on the island. She also gave the current status of goblin food, water, clothing, bedding, and other necessities. It was about as hopeless as expected.

"I am Grayheim," one of the final advisers, a monstrous goblin, began. "I am the general of your armies and the marshal of the goblin nation. Currently, you have five hundred and six battle-ready warriors, two hundred and three injured warriors, and thirty-six warriors who lack the proper equipment."

"And I am Tostrus, captain of your royal guard. Those of us who survived the battle are ready to assume our role as your protectors," the final goblin concluded.

Sephtis swept his eyes across the table. "In summary, we have little food, little water, little clothing, no raw materials for weapons or armor, few medical supplies, and a great number of people who need the aforementioned items."

A collective nod answered him.

"So," he continued. "I approached the Queen of England, hoping to negotiate an alliance of convenience. Unfortunately, the mundane government has had no actionable intelligence about the threat of Voldemort, and regarded _me_ as the more immediate threat to the stability of England. We will receive no help from them."

Sirius gaped openly. "That's outrageous!" he exclaimed, much to the surprise of the goblins in attendance. "How can she so blatantly ignore an obvious threat?"

"It seems that the Ministry did not inform the Crown about Voldemort beyond describing him as a dangerous criminal. And recently, they have failed to even alert the mundane government that Voldemort is on English soil once again, let alone of the fact that he marches with an army of more than three hundred witches and wizards," Sephtis explained. "I do not blame her for her ignorance. It seems, however, that the Crown is not without its own wizards. I had to fight them to escape the palace when the Queen attempted my arrest."

At this, Tostrus gave a low hiss between his teeth. "That was a grave insult."

Sephtis turned his head curiously. "They did not even scratch me," he replied blithely. "We will take no action against England at this time. She will attempt to renegotiate when Voldemort shows his true colors. In the meantime, we have the issue of supply to resolve. And I know exactly what we can do.

After a breath, he leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. "The Crown does not appear worried by Voldemort. I say we give them something to worry about. I want to orchestrate raids on muggle property to procure for ourselves what supplies we require, and we will use disguises and Voldemort's trademark to muddy the waters. To the Ministry, it will be clear that it is not Voldemort's work, but to the Crown, who appear to be ignorant, it will be more difficult for them to differentiate between our raids and Voldemort's."

Sirius blinked in surprise at the proposal, but before he could speak an objection he caught the expressions of barely contained excitement on the faces of the goblin advisers around the table. He held his tongue. "How will we make our raids look like the actions of Voldemort?" Tostrus asked, looking pensive rather than excited.

"The spell _morsmordre_ throws his sigil into the sky. Combined with dark robes and masks, it will appear at first glance to be the work of Death Eaters," Sephtis replied. "If it does nothing else, it will compel the Crown to approach the Ministry for a report on Voldemort's actions. Once they are aware of the threat that he poses to them, then perhaps they will reconsider their opinion of me. Whether or not they believe it was Voldemort, we do require the supplies, and I see no other way of procuring them."

"Do you have targets in mind?" Grayheim asked.

Sephtis nodded. "Storehouses for muggle grocery stores contain large quantities of food. Industrial warehouses contain pallets of metal. Clothing and other textiles can be stolen from warehouses or superstores as we require them. In any case, the theft will take place via apparition and portkey. Large canvases spelled to deliver the stolen goods will be used to transport the items. Arrival, theft, and escape should take place in as little time as possible. We can use the field between the castle and the village as the destination point for portkeys."

"Can you make a portkey?" Sirius asked hesitantly. "Can you cast _morsmordre_?"

"This leads me to my second point. I recently welcomed a friend to the island, an elf, who was once the servant of Lucius Malfoy, the Death Eater lieutenant. It appears that he was savagely beaten and cursed before being set free, assuming that either his injuries or magical exhaustion would destroy him. He came to me, rather than succumbing so easily. Using the knowledge he possesses, I intend to conduct a raid upon a smaller property of one of Voldemort's followers. I want to capture them alive for interrogation," Sephtis declared. "From a Death Eater, I can learn the spell. As for portkeys…their construction is simple enough to anyone accomplished in charms."

Sirius nodded and scratched his chin. "It could work," he offered quietly. A few reluctant nods met his statement, but Tostrus seemed the most skeptical.

"Good. The raids will be conducted by wizards, in teams of three. Sirius, you will find some volunteers for the task. When you're ready, go out and find suitable targets or choose someone to search them out for you. Tostrus, we will need an organized method of moving the stolen goods away from the arrival points before the next raid. I want you to cordon off nine plots of land and mark each of them with a number. The portkeys I will make will fill each plot with the items beneath the canvas."

Sirius and Tostrus agreed with his plan.

"As for the rest of you, I want you to find some assistants and organize your responsibilities. The island will be run like a military base for the foreseeable future. All supplies are to be rationed by Gunhilde or Sirius Black. All medical supplies, from the smallest bandage to potent salves, are to be collected from everyone and taken to the military hospital for storage. Make sure that the citizens of the island understand what you are doing. Grayheim, you and your men are responsible for public order. If there are any incidents I will come looking for you, understood?"

"Yes," Grayheim agreed. "Although, my responsibility is to ensure your safety…"

"I have no need for guards on the island," Sephtis replied. "And in the field of battle, I much prefer the company of familiar warriors. Redtooth's men bled with me before; they will bleed with me again before the war is done," Sephtis declared. "Now that each of you have your duties to attend to, is there anything else we need discuss before I go to abduct some Death Eaters?"

No one spoke. "Excellent. Somebody tell Redtooth to assemble his men and bring them to the courtyard."

Sephtis turned away from the table and disappeared into his office, leaving the council in silence. They each looked at each other, shrugged, and wandered back through the castle, towards the village.

* * *

Redtooth clapped his wrist over his breastplate and bowed deeply. "We are most honored that you consider me worthy of serving at your side in battle," he intoned. The rest of his warriors likewise bowed, and Sephtis returned this with a nod of his head.

"Were you told of our mission?" he asked.

Redtooth shook his head. He looked down, surprised, as a house elf appeared at King Sephtis' side. The pale wizard gave a small smile to the creature as he spoke. "This is Dobby, my loyal servant," the elf peered at the goblins with suspiciously wet eyes. "He once served Lucius Malfoy, and knows much about the Death Eaters and their allies. He has provided me with a target: The Crabbe House. The father of that house was a Death Eater in the last war who escaped prosecution because of Malfoy's interference, and it is currently being used, along with many other pureblood properties, as a staging point for the Dark Lord's forces."

"How many?" Redtooth asked.

"Fifteen," Sephtis replied shortly. "Perhaps more."

Considering there were only twelve goblins in Redtooth's company that were combat-ready, it was a somewhat daunting number.

"And how quickly can we expect reinforcements to arrive?"

"Twenty minutes." Upon receiving skeptical looks, the gaunt wizard reached into his robes and withdrew several large stones. "These are anchors for a ward scheme. Placing them at three corners of a property covers the area with an anti-apparition, anti-portkey, anti-floo ward, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the premises by these methods. We will approach the property from a good distance, far outside the range of any detection wards. These stones will be placed a mile apart, at the vertices of an equilateral triangle. They will remain inactive until I activate them. Once the stones are set, we will approach the property and regroup on the northern side, behind a knoll which will hide us from any pickets they have in the manor. The attack will commence. Our goal today is to take a prisoner or two. The prisoners can be sent back to the island by portkey."

Here, the king withdrew several crossbow bolts with barbed points and intricate runes carved along their shaft. "These bolts will stun the target. They are also a portkey. I will indicate a target with green light. Your best marksman will make the shot. Once I have confirmed the hit, I can speak the passphrase and the prisoner will be secure."

"Where does the portkey go?"

"A cell in the castle. We will continue fighting for as long as we have the advantage. Kill as many of them as you can. When we are ready to depart, I will throw down the wards, and we can escape by portkey."

He waved his hand and a bag dropped to the ground in front of the goblins. "There are bracelets in the bag. These will return us to the courtyard when the word 'withdraw' is spoken."

Redtooth and his men equipped the bracelets. "If portkeys are blocked during our retreat, what will we do?"

"I can identify the one who set the anti-portkey ward and kill him, or we can retreat on foot until the ward no longer restrains us," Sephtis replied. "In any case, we must be swift and we must be lethal. Once the battle begins it will only last a short time. I am sure you already know this, but don't stand too close to one another. Explosive curses will make short work of a tight formation."

Redtooth nodded sharply.

"Good. When you are ready to depart, step forward."

Sephtis summoned his staff and straightened his shoulders. A moment later, his robes transformed to a vest with matching black trousers. His off-hand opened and suddenly held a dark, triangular shield with a silver hand embossed upon its front. The staff slowly transformed to a spear with a long, wicked barb with twin hooks at its base, taller than Sephtis with a pointed butt. With bare arms and hair tied back in a knot, he looked very much like a soldier.

The goblins assessed their equipment, each stepping forward at their own pace. One of them held out his arm. "I will secure the prisoners."

Sephtis relinquished the portkey-bolts with a nod.

Once everyone was ready, Sephtis turned to Dobby. "Can you take me to the place that we discussed?"

The elf touched his master's shield, and both were gone. A second passed, then the elf was back, taking hold of a pair of goblins before apparating once more with a soft _pop._ He repeated this six times until he was the only one that remained in the courtyard, at which point he wrung his hands nervously at his waist before disappearing once again, in search of a task with which he could distract himself.

Sephtis and his warriors were crouched beside one another in a small copse of trees many miles away from the island. The Crabbe House was located somewhere in Northern England, near the border with Scotland, but its location was unplottable. Regardless, Sephtis was able to utilize a Roman mapping spell to quickly familiarize himself with the local area, and he knelt down in the midst of Redtooth's men to speak in a quiet voice.

"The first stone goes here." Taking it, he placed it on the ground. "We are about a half-mile north of the manor. Proceed slowly until you reach the second hill. Stay there, silently, until I arrive."

Glancing at Redtooth to make sure the goblin understood, Sephtis hoisted himself up with his spear and stepped to the side, disappearing silently mid-step. The goblins blinked at the magnificent feat of magic and hustled briskly through the trees, moving with surprising ease considering the plates that they wore. They skirted the foot of the gentle rise just beyond the trees, unwilling to mount the crest in case anybody was watching from the manor. Eventually, they were forced to crawl over the lowest rise on their bellies, minimizing the profile that would be visible from the manor.

The depression between the hills was long and shallow. They jogged the distance, and by the time they reached the place that Sephtis had described they were all feeling their blood rushing through their limbs, and their breathing was just beginning to come quickly. Warmed up, they waited.

Sephtis appeared in their midst, startling a few of the goblins into raising their weapons. The wizard held his hand out and knelt once more.

"The ward stones are in place. I inspected the manor's defenses; it will take some effort to bring them down. You will have to cover me once I begin," Sephtis explained.

The warriors grinned dangerously as Sephtis rose up once again and mounted the hill with his shield before him. It was midmorning by this point, and the sun was bright at his back; he cut an unmistakable figure as he stood above the Manor grounds, and he was almost immediately spotted.

Redtooth heard his king muttering as he descended towards the ward line, and even _he,_ who had no magic of his own, could feel the snap-hum as the anti-apparition, anti-portkey, anti-floo ward burst to life in the sky above. The sunlight turned violet as it passed through the active field of magic, before the ward settled and became invisible.

Then, leveling his spear towards the manor, Sephtis unleashed hell. A bolt of lightning as thick as his waist snapped across the distance and collided powerfully with the wards, crawling like spiderwebs across the dome and screeching thunderously. The goblins surrounded their king, forming a shield wall on either side, but the Death Eaters hardly had time to react to the attack before the wards were beginning to buckle.

Five seconds…ten…fifteen…

 _BOOM!_

The ground shook and the sky split as the bolt of lightning cracked over the ward, splitting the ward-stone which had been buried someplace in the depths of the manor, and arcing up into the sky. Sephtis released his spell and straightened up.

"Attack."

The Death Eaters who had scrambled into the manor regretted it as the ward-stone smoldered and exploded beneath the foundations of the house. A group of six or seven had gathered and approached their attackers swiftly, barking spells and raising a group shield. Sephtis, spotting an opportunity, surged beyond the shield wall of the goblins and engaged all six of them, casting their shields down with a single percussive blast and painting three of them green.

The color poured from them as they continued to fight, oblivious of the fact that they had been hit. Their compatriots quickly found themselves being driven back as Sephtis continued his inexorable approach, firing spell after spell in a continuous stream as he deftly redirected their counterattacks with his shield.

A crossbow bolt slipped in among the storm of spells and struck true, dropping one of the marked targets. Sephtis immediately covered the fallen Death Eater with a shield to prevent him being revived and pressed forward. He killed a second and severed the limbs of a third before a second bolt arrived, dropping another unfortunate Death Eater.

Rather than waiting for the third, Sephtis barked "carcarem" and his captives were secure.

The intensity of his attack remained the same but there was a tangible difference in the order of his attacks. His shield breaker came first, like before, but it was followed immediately by piercing hexes rather than bludgeoning hexes. They were advanced spells capable of inflicting a gruesome injury not dissimilar to a hollow-point bullet, and the instant that he switched the rest of the desperate Death Eaters were either driven back, lethally wounded, or killed outright.

By this time the rest of them had poured from the house to confront their attackers. A few were taking potshots from the windows.

The goblins had turned to face the more dangerous threat as soon as they had seen the captives go down, and they were beginning to falter under considerable fire from the defending wizards. Sephtis swept towards the manor and unleashed a series of explosive spells which tore the windows out of the house and pocked its stone walls with gaping, smoldering craters.

Beginning to tire, he drew attention away from Redtooth's men and began a systematic retreat. The goblins had abandoned the shield wall, preferring a staggered firing line. Each warrior used his crossbow from behind his shield, trading shots with the spell-casters that danced between the trees and statues of Crabbe's garden. Sephtis skirted the edge of the garden briefly, felt a group of wizards passing his wardline, and used most of his remaining magic to unleash fiendfyre.

He apparated behind Redtooth and knelt with a gusty sigh. "Pull back," he commanded, Shielding the both of them. Redooth fired his crossbow and dropped a wizard who had foolishly stepped out of the cover of his compatriot's shield to take aim at a goblin ten yards to their left.

A command in gobbledegook had the goblins pulling back, over the crest of the hill, where they stepped together.

Sephtis dropped the wards and slumped his shoulders in relief. Anchoring them to his own magic had strained him, but it was the only way for him to control them without interacting with one of the ward-stones. Feeling more energetic, he traded a final set of spells with an enterprising Death Eater who had rushed the crest of the hill.

The unfortunate fellow had his legs blown off at the hips before he was set ablaze and left to die.

"Withdraw," Sephtis shouted over the screaming wizards who continued to battle fiendfyre in the garden and the dying man upon the crest of the hill. The world spun away from them just as a cacophony of incoming apparition marked Death Eater reinforcements.

The goblin company landed in a heap of flailing limbs and rattling armor at the center of the courtyard. Sephtis stumbled only slightly, five paces apart, and dusted himself off, dismissing his shield and allowing his spear to return to a staff. He leaned upon it and breathed deeply.

"Injuries?"

"Lubeck's got a bad cut. Tirol, cruciatus exposure. Boldfoot, burns," Redtooth spat as he stood, drawing up a trembling, insensate warrior at his side.

Sephtis immediately swept forward, gathering each of the wounded at his side, and together they apparated with a _crack_ like thunder. When Sephtis returned, he was paler than usual and swaying on his feet. "Good work. Your fellows are being treated by Michkal as we speak," he said. "See that your men get some rest, Redtooth. I have prisoners to interrogate."


	38. Part 3 Chapter 11

Part 3 Chapter 11

Sephtis regarded the unconscious Death Eater silently for a moment. His portkey had worked perfectly, although it had deposited the prisoner into the cell with rather more force than absolutely necessary. The bolt had been crushed into the man's shoulder by impact with the floor, and the barb had tangled itself in the back of the wizard's black robes. Sephtis lifted the man up, conjured a chair, and deposited him unceremoniously into it. A deft cutting charm split the robe's dark fabric, and Sephtis used his fingers to reveal the fletching of the quarrel itself. The runic shaft was almost completely buried in the man's shoulder, below the collarbone.

The dark wizard groaned when Sephtis hauled him forward by his wound, making a similar cut on the back of his robes. He saw that the barb had passed completely through the man's body, and that it had taken a chunk of meat with it. He severed the barb from the shaft of the bolt with another spell and took hold of the quarrel's butt.

A vicious wrench tore the projectile free, and Sephtis stepped back as the prisoner jerked to life screaming. Discarding the bloodied shaft, the dark king of Azkaban eyed the convulsing prisoner dispassionately, sticking the man's feet to the chair as an afterthought. Blood welled up from the puncture in the man's shoulder, and Sephtis heard a rattle in the man's screams that implied an injury to his lung.

At last, the Death Eater sagged against the back of the chair, reaching up with trembling hands to touch his injury. He hissed and moaned, dark eyes flicking up to glimpse the gaunt wizard who had defeated him.

"Where am I?" he whispered. His accent was foreign but subtle.

Sephtis didn't answer for a moment. instead, he watched the blood as it trailed along the Death Eater's exposed skin, disappearing into the black fabric of the man's robes. "Azkaban," he eventually intoned.

This was answered by a low groan as the prisoner hung his head so that his chin nearly touched his chest.

"Tell me your name," Sephtis ordered. He didn't raise his voice. He gave no indication at all that he knew of his captive's pain. He might as well have been discussing the weather.

The dark wizard shook his head. "You'll just kill me anyway," he replied, resigned. "Why should I tell you anything?"

"The name of a dead man means nothing," Sephtis replied. "Tell me. There's no harm in introducing yourself."

The man pressed his palm against the puncture in his shoulder and hissed again. When he drew breath once more, it was shallow, and his skin was beginning to look pale. "Leon," the man eventually muttered.

"Leon," Sephtis repeated slowly. "I am Sephtis. I am the one that will decide your fate. I have questions for you, but...I don't think that you will be much for conversation in a short while. Your lung has been punctured. It will have collapsed already, and your chest cavity may be filling with blood as we speak. I'm afraid you'll soon find it quite difficult to breathe, and your pulse will become erratic...increasingly thready and slow."

Leon raised his head to glare. "You're sick," he spat, breath catching as the word left his mouth. He groaned and fell back against the chair, reaching across his chest and fumbling with his robe.

"You won't find your wand there, I'm afraid," Sephtis said. Leon dropped his hand. "I destroyed it."

"Why are you doing this?"

"We are at war," Sephtis replied blithely. "You are my enemy. Didn't your master tell you that you were fighting a war?"

Leon nodded his head, scowling darkly. He coughed wetly and winced as the color drained from his face, leaving him pale and clammy.

"So, let us begin. I admit that I am not very skilled in the Mind Arts, but between the two of us I am sure that we will make do," Sephtis continued conversationally. He conjured another chair and eased himself into it, close enough to Leon that their knees were almost touching. The Death Eater twitched as if he might lunge forward, but Sephtis caught him in the chest with the head of his staff and pressed the man against the back of the chair.

It glowed with magic and Leon hissed uncomfortably as it began to heat up against his sternum. "None of that, now," Sephtis cautioned him. The staff slid across Leon's ribs and caught on the open wound. A pulse of magic was all it took for the blood to sizzle and hiss, and Leon's mouth opened in a soundless scream as his body convulsed violently in the chair.

Then he found his voice and a high-pitched keen pierced the air, echoing along the empty corridors of the castle and fading by degrees until the only sound between them was desperate, labored breathing.

"I wouldn't want you to bleed to death while we're working," Sephtis explained, laying his staff across his knees. Leon moaned and twitched as an aftershock of pain danced across his raw nerves. The wound in his shoulder was blackened, oozing with clear fluid, but the flow of blood had been slowed nearly to a halt. "Tell me, Leon, how many years have you been serving the Dark Lord?"

"I…I won't talk to you," Leon answered him, forcing his teary eyes to open. "Just kill me. I won't talk."

"I didn't think that you would," Sephtis replied. He leaned forward slightly, hesitating only briefly. "Look at me."

At once, Leon shut his eyes tightly and turned his head to the side.

"Ah, come now," Sephtis murmured, reaching out with one hand. His fingers sparked briefly just before he seized Leon by the jaw and turned his head. By shunting magic through Leon's nerves, Sephtis achieved a crude form of paralysis that didn't cause the muscles to seize up, so it was easy for him to shift the prisoner's posture until he was looking directly into the man's closed eyes.

He paused for a moment to think. How to open Leon's eyes…

" _Sussurus,_ " Sephtis whispered, still touching the man's hard jaw. A shock of power leapt down his arm and burned through the man's body, and as his muscles spasmed involuntarily his eyes opened and locked with Sephtis' indomitable stare.

The initial intrusion of the mind can be compared to a surgical cut if a practiced Mind Healer or a skilled interrogator is the one performing the act. For Sephtis, it was more like the battering strike of a flail. Leon hissed through suddenly clenched teeth as his instinctive defenses were crushed aside like tissue paper, and Sephtis knew that the man's head would soon begin to burn with a severe migraine.

"Now," Sephtis said, slowly. He felt the man's hatred and fear welling up like steam from a geyser and shuddered in the middle of his sentence. "Tell me how long you have served the Dark Lord."

Leon's jaw dropped open as he struggled uselessly, incapable of stopping his thoughts from turning unbidden to the covenant he had sworn with the shade. Images and flashes of sensation returned to him of that night, so long ago, when he had brought a woman as sacrifice to the cavern where the shade had been hiding.

In moments, the whole truth of his sins was revealed. As his skull began to pound, Leon groaned and felt tears swelling in his eyes, but Sephtis was unrelenting. At last, the mental assault subsided just slightly, and Leon released a breath that he hadn't known he was holding.

"Please…" he whispered, surprised to find that he could speak. He didn't know if the words resounded in his mind or his mouth was actually moving, and it didn't matter.

"Tell me how many men the Dark Lord has in his service."

"Tell me, have you ever summoned spirits or demons?"

"Tell me, have you ever attempted to revive the dead?"

"Where are the Dark Lord's men located?"

It went on…and on…and on. Leon was crying and gasping for breath, jerking and grinding his teeth. He was panting, drooling, spitting, screaming. Sephtis remained absolutely still, staring into the mind of a ruined man, tearing through memory after memory, turning his attention to one topic or another. There seemed no rhyme or reason to his interrogation. It seemed as if he wanted to know everything that there was to know about Leon Videnti, the aspiring dark wizard who had thrown his life away in service to Voldemort.

As the world began to spin before Leon's eyes, and shadows encroached on his vision, Sephtis finally released him. He stood, vanishing the chair that he had been using as he stepped a few paces away. Past the throbbing pain in his skull, Leon watched as his captor twisted his knuckles around the staff that he carried at his side.

"You are a wicked man, Leon," he said, seemingly to no one. "You have sacrificed souls to demons, conjured spirits of the dead, assisted in the depraved art of necromancy, and contributed to the schemes and machinations of monsters beyond your feeble understanding. You have served evil for all of your life."

"Please…" Leon whined, pulling at the charms that held his legs to the chair. "Kill me. Please. I can't...the pain is unbearable…"

"The Mind Arts are a cruel thing," Sephtis observed, almost in agreement, as he turned back to his captive.

Leon snarled, jerking his head up as his limbs trembled weakly with the effort of keeping him upright in his forward-leaning posture. "You're a monster," he hissed, coughing. "You're no better than I am."

"The difference between us, Leon," Sephtis answered him, tapping the ground with his staff. "Is that you have fallen so far that you no longer regret your evil deeds."

Leon curled his lip just before his head was severed from his body. It popped from his neck like a cork from a bottle and flew back against the stone wall with the force of Sephtis' severing hex, and even as the corpse sagged to the side and spilled its blood across the stone, Sephtis scorched the body and the chair with a burst of flame. When there was only ash, Sephtis breathed deeply and departed from the cell.

The other prisoner was already awake when he arrived. Pale, terrified gray eyes tracked the steps of the gaunt wizard as he opened the cell and stepped inside.

"No!" the man moaned, scrambling away from his approaching captive. "I'll tell you everything! I swear!"

"You will," Sephtis agreed. And he conjured a chair.

* * *

Sirius fidgeted uncomfortably as he watched the pale king. He was forced, somewhat reluctantly, to admit his mixed feelings regarding the gaunt young man, and his recent actions were doing very little to ameliorate the situation. As usual, it seemed that Sephtis could understand the older man's thoughts, for he soon paused in his writing and set his quill aside, folding his bony fingers atop the parchment and blinking.

"Are you going to hover in the doorway or sit down?"

Shuffling into the office which had once belonged to the warden of Azkaban, Sirius turned his eyes to its sparse interior and wondered why Sephtis had yet to replace any of the furniture that had been destroyed by the departing guards. The only other chair in the room was just barely tall enough for Sirius to sit in it comfortably, and it groaned worryingly as he settled into it. "I heard what you did to the prisoners. Hell, I think the whole castle heard."

Sephtis nodded his head slowly. "Does it bother you?"

Sirius scoffed. "Of course it does! We didn't resort to torture in the last war, and I don't see any reason why we should stoop to such a level in this one," he declared, narrowing his eyes.

"It was legilimancy, actually," Sephtis replied. "The only pain that they suffered was a result of their wounds and my exceedingly crude treatment of those injuries. As you probably know, pain makes it almost impossible for an occlumens to protect their mind. Only true masters are capable of maintaining their shields through agony, and neither of the men we captured qualified as masters of anything."

"Mind-rape isn't any better," Sirius replied hotly. "And withholding medical treatment of war prisoners _is_ considered torture."

"I'm glad that this concerns you," Sephtis interrupted, leaning back. "It concerns me as well. Do you think I enjoyed what I did to those men? That I took pleasure in watching the wicked affairs of their lives unfold before my eyes in snippets of horror?"

"You shouldn't have done it. I don't even know _how_ you did it. For Christ's sake, you should still be in school!"

Sephtis sighed and tapped his fingers on his desk. "You know from experience how Azkaban will strip the humanity from you. You were on the first level, farthest from the dementor hive, while I languished on the lowest level. I may be sixteen, but I am not a child any longer."

"Do you even care that you executed two men this morning? I saw what you did to the prisoners in the courtyard when Dumbledore came, but I excused that because they had been sentenced to a fate worse than death. But I suppose I should have started to worry when I never noticed you so much as hesitate in the act!" Sirius exclaimed, leaning forward as if he was about to stand.

"Listen to me," Sephtis barked, and Sirius dropped back into his chair with a rough sigh. "I do not have to kowtow to your expectations in this matter or in any other. I have been raised to act as a champion, a soldier, an executioner, and that is what I am. Do not mistake me for a hero."

"What do you mean you were raised to be an executioner? Dumbledore would never do such a thing!"

"I was sent to the Dursley's as a child," Sephtis said quietly, looking down at his hands. "You know that they hate magic?"

Suddenly pale, Sirius nodded in spite of the apparent non-sequitur.

"They starved me. I don't even remember what I did, but it was probably something innocuous, something foolish. Vernon threw me into a cupboard and locked the door," Sephtis continued stoically, betraying no emotion. "I died, I think. Who knows how long I was there, but it was thirst that did it, probably. I knew I was dying, and I was glad."

"You died? I don't understand."

"It was when I met my master. Death," Sephtis whispered. He looked up and met Sirius' disbelieving eyes. "He was like an angel. I thought that was what he was, at first. He put his hand on my chest and I breathed easy. Though I was hungry, I did not starve. Though I was thirsty, I did not waste away. He told me that I would see him again. He called me his child."

Sirius said nothing in response to this, and Sephtis allowed himself to continue after a long, slow blink of his eyes. "He did return, later. When my Hogwarts Letter came, Vernon was angry. So angry. I'd never seen murder in his eyes like that before, and believe me I had seen him at his worst many times. He came towards me, and then Death was there. Vernon fell to the ground, clutching his chest, and I fled. It was then that Death approached me, and told me who he was. He said that I was a fated child, that he cared for me. We swore a pact that day, Death and I. You see, Voldemort has made an enemy of God."

"I didn't know you were religious," Sirius said slowly.

"You wonder how it was that I do the things that I do?" Sephtis asked rhetorically. "Well, it is because of Death's mentorship that I am the wizard you see. When I discovered magic, I was told to read every book that I could find. So I did. In my dreams, he tutored me in magic, in combat, in mental disciplines. I learned how to be a man from Death. So I am not really a man at all, am I?"

"This is insane," Sirius muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't know where to start with this. Does this have something to do with the Hallows? You mentioned them after the duel with Voldemort."

"Everything and nothing. I was Death's faithful servant even before I united his talismans," Sephtis replied. "As the bearer of these relics, I am closer to him now than I was before. His knowledge, His power, His intuition…these are what have allowed me to do the things that I have done. By his will, I have the strength to do what is necessary to safeguard mankind against enemies they cannot begin to comprehend."

"And he condones torture?" Sirius scoffed. "You're saying that God is making of you a monster more terrible than the man you've been commissioned to kill?"

At this, Sephtis' eyes flashed with power and he rose from his seat, leaning over the desk to pin Sirius with a deathly glare. "It would take more than legilimancy to accomplish _that._ Rest assured, if I had done something that displeased my master, I would not need _you_ to remind me of the fact."

"I think you're full of shit!" Sirius exploded, standing as well. "I think that you need to reconsider how far you're willing to go to win this war. It wouldn't help anybody to exchange one Dark Lord for another."

Sephtis shook his head. "I know that we do not know each other very well, Sirius," he began, "but I am hurt that you think so little of me, nonetheless. You don't understand what is at stake, what I am fighting for. Do you think that Voldemort offended God with his political agendas? Ha! There are more things in Hell and Earth than you could possibly imagine, although you surely have a better perspective than most considering the Dementors."

"If you want to believe that God's out there, talking to you in dreams, fine. But you can't use it as an argument to justify atrocities," Sirius answered sharply. "I want you to explain to me, right now, why you were willing to do what you have done."

"Or what?" Sephtis replied, taking his seat once more and waving his hand dismissively.

"I'll leave," Sirius replied immediately. "I'll go to Dumbledore."

Sephtis considered the older man for a long time, and nodded. "Alright. Dumbledore will find himself on Azkaban soon enough, asking for my help, but I will give you your explanation.

"What is war, really? Is it supposed to be honorable? Is it supposed to be orderly? Is there meant to be a distinction between combatants and innocents? You'd have me believe that there's some unwritten code of conduct that I should be following. Is it honor? Whatever it is, our enemies have none of it. They don't care for your ideas of morality, for your ethics, for your distinctions. And look at our situation, Sirius; does it look like I have the time or the resources to care for prisoners? We will be forced to do things that we don't want to do. People will die, painfully. I don't know where you get off judging me for doing what's necessary for the sake of this country, for the world, but it ends here. This is more than a political matter, Sirius. Believe it or not, there are souls at stake," Sephtis exclaimed. "Voldemort is more terrible than you know, and his masters are more powerful than any mortal man could hope to face."

"Souls are at stake?" Sirius asked, openly scoffing. "Yours is lost already, I fear, if you're willing to torture and kill without remorse. What ever happened to your conscience?"

Sephtis laughed coldly, "It was stripped from me, day after day, by demons," he answered. "It was crushed by the abuse of small-minded fools. I do not claim to be a good man, Sirius. I know that I have done terrible things, and that I _will do_ terrible things, but I regret none of them."

"For what? For England?" Sirius spat. "Please. You don't strike me as a patriot. I think you _enjoy_ it. That's what I think. And I'm afraid for you, Harry. I'm terrified. This isn't what James would have wanted for his son."

"I hated what I did to the prisoners that we took, Sirius. I won't lie to you and tell you that I don't enjoy the heat of battle, the rush of combat, because I do; but I don't relish the act of killing. Perhaps, if Harry were here, he would agree with you. I am not Harry. I told you before that he had died, and I meant it. Harry was _human,_ he was a child, he was, ultimately, too weak and too arrogant to do what needed to be done. I am Sephtis, and I do not have the luxury of _humanity._ I am a broken vessel, and through me the wrath of God will come to Voldemort and his followers," Sephtis replied quietly. "If you leave, you will only find yourself returning to this island when Hogwarts has fallen. My efforts in this war would suffer for your absence. People could die because you shirk your responsibilities."

"Hogwarts has never before been conquered by any wizard, Dark or Light, and I don't think Voldemort has the capability to make history, at least not in that way," Sirius argued. "Not while Dumbledore still lives. And I am not much of a leader, kid. Never was."

"Much faith you have, in Dumbledore, and so very little in yourself," Sephtis sighed. "I am telling you that it will fall. Hogwarts has stood against wizards and witches of incredible power, but it has never faced the Gates of Hell. That is what is coming, Sirius. No mortal man can hope to stand against it, not even Dumbledore."

"I don't believe in Hell," Sirius hissed. "If Hell existed, it would have been Azkaban, and I survived Azkaban for these many years. If there are such things as demons, then the dementors were it, and you destroyed them. Voldemort, powerful though he may be, is no demon. He is only a man. And men can be killed like any other."

"Then go," Sephtis replied sharply, rising up and suddenly holding his staff. A pulse of red magic rippled across the stones as his eyes blazed like the Killing Curse. "Like the Queen, like the prime Minister, you labor under misconceptions and judge me in ignorance! Fine! Depart from this castle, and see for yourself the horrors that will be unleashed upon the world by this _mere man_ you name Voldemort. It will happen sooner than you think. Don't come back here, Sirius Black, until you're ready to do what is necessary for the sake of this world and its people."

Sirius clenched his jaw, nodded tightly, and swept from the office, leaving Sephtis alone with his troubled thoughts.


	39. Part 3 Chapter 12

Part 3 Chapter 12

Sephtis and Redtooth watched from the castle walls as teams of goblins began sorting through the goods that had been stolen from muggle warehouses. They were a meticulous bunch, goblins, and Sephtis knew that the inventory would be entirely catalogued in a few hours' time; then he would know what they were still missing. It had been slightly more difficult than he had expected, considering the fact that none of the wizards on the island had wands, but Sephtis had managed the task in spite of that limitation. The Dark Mark hung in the sky above six different places all across England, all within the span of an hour.

It was a show of power, really. Sephtis had demonstrated his ability to infiltrate six separate locations—including two military armories—in what amounted to an instant in a strategic sense, accomplishing his objectives and inflicting terrible property damage at each site. The Crown would be forced to address the issue, and that would necessitate research into the threat of Voldemort. Research which would, hopefully, force them to reconsider their opinion of Azkaban.

In the meantime, however, Sephtis knew that they didn't have the time to wait for the muggles to realize the threat of Voldemort. Honestly, even wizards didn't truly understand the magnitude of the danger that they faced. Only Sephtis knew the extent of Voldemort's corruption.

"The Ministry will be attacked in three days," Sephtis said into the air, drawing Redtooth's attention.

The goblin blinked at his king. "How do you know?"

"I was told in a dream that this would happen," Sephtis replied. "But I will tell my councilors that I discovered the information in my interrogations of our prisoners."

Redtooth nodded slowly. "What happened to the prisoners?"

"Dead."

The goblin didn't look surprised. In fact, he appeared pleased to hear it. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Sephtis replied honestly. "We don't have the power or the numbers to face him head on and win. He took casualties in Sanctum, but he will have recruited more wands to his cause by now. And he has other, more unsavory methods of acquiring foot soldiers. That battle would be over before it ever began."

"Then don't fight," Redtooth shrugged.

Sephtis sighed and slid his eyes off the horizon to face his advisor. "Azkaban will be the only stronghold capable of standing against Voldemort's power in less than three weeks. Hogwarts will fall shortly after the Ministry. As things stand, Azkaban is considered a rebel state by the Crown and the Ministry. No one knows that they will find safety here, they would not know where to run. When Voldemort brings his terror to the people of Britain, where will they go if we do not show them the way?"

"We have to fight," Redtooth summarized. "To show whose side we're on."

"Yes," Sephtis agreed quietly.

"Dammit, how many warriors have to die to make a bloody statement!" Redtooth ejaculated suddenly, slapping his armored fist against his chest.

Sephtis frowned. "How many people can we save by bringing them here, to Azkaban?"

"You told me that we would be fighting at Hogwarts," Redtooth began slowly. "We'll be taking most of the children from the castle. Their parents will come. There's no need to embarrass ourselves at the Ministry building, sacrificing lives and precious equipment in a losing battle."

"What of the elderly or the young, who have no children?" Sephtis argued.

"We can't reach everyone."

Sephtis sighed. "You're right. So, I won't take our army to the Ministry. But I am going. And you will be coming with me."

"Why?"

"There are certain items in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that must be destroyed. Voldemort could do terrible harm to thousands of people if he had access to them. The first is the Register of Magical Use in Britain. It records the usage of magic in areas that aren't covered by Ministry-approved ward-schemes, and is used primarily for the detection of accidental magic in muggle areas. The second is the Department of Mysteries. There are ancient magicks held there that would be better left forgotten, for they are powerful and wicked in equal measure."

"Well," Redtooth snorted, "Why don't you just destroy the whole damn building?"

Sephtis only smiled a cold, unforgiving smile.

* * *

Amelia Bones and eighty-seven Aurors, forty-nine Hit-Wizards, and fourteen Unspeakables were spread throughout an enlarged, fortified, warded atrium. The Ministry of Magic had never been intended as a stronghold, and with only two-days' notice they had been forced to improvise. With Unspeakables on the job that meant a rather daunting array of traps, chest-high walls, and shimmering fields of power, all drawing from the incredible ley line that surged beneath the soil of the Ministry. Ministry spies, including one Nymphadora Tonks and a team of young pureblood scions that had turned traitor amidst the ranks of Voldemort's followers after the massacre at Sanctum, reported that Voldemort had found a way to bypass the usual protections of the Ministry, and that he was planning on beginning his assault in the atrium.

He must have felt that overwhelming force would win the day, since there was no avenue of retreat from the Ministry. At least, not an easy one.

From the reports, it appeared that Voldemort had convinced the British vampire covens to support him in the war, and there was a pack of werewolves that had aligned themselves with the Dark Lord. For some reason the other packs seemed extremely reluctant to involve themselves with the Dark Lord, which was just as well, since Voldemort already commanded an army of more than five hundred.

Spies had revealed his intent to attack the Ministry in force, and they had said that he was reanimating corpses to bolster his forces.

Kingsley, who stood beside her, eyed the pristine battleground before him doubtfully. "This is going to be a massacre," he said, and it didn't sound like me meant that in a positive way.

"You could have contributed to the defenses," Amelia pointed out rather crossly.

Shacklebolt scoffed. "Wouldn't matter," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. "I told you before, we cannot comprehend the power of the allies that Voldemort has made. They are beyond our mortal capabilities."

"Go summon up yourself some angels, then," Amelia hissed. "I, however, will do what I was trained to do. Our nation is counting on us."

Kingsley smiled grimly. "More than the nation, Amelia."

Before she could ask him what he meant, a thunderous _crack_ split the air and shook the ground. At once, Kingsley's wand was drawn and aimed at the flashing, pulsing fissure that had opened in the air at the extreme end of the atrium. It was painful to glance into the light, but Shacklebolt's face was set in grim determination and he refused to look away as silhouettes of the horrors that Voldemort had conjured began to stir in the depths of the burning light.

Suddenly, the fissure dimmed and hissed like water on a griddle, seeming to constrict like the jaws of a great beast, before issuing forth a horde of shambling _things._ They might once have been human corpses, but they bore little resemblance to the mundane now. All bones and decaying sinew, they moved with deceptive speed, jostling against each other as they seemed to pour across the atrium floor. Hollow, skull-like expressions peered at the terror-stricken wizards who had assembled to defend the ministry.

Shacklebolt was the first to recover, unleashing a torrent of blue-white flame from his wand that barreled across the floor and exploded on contact with the horde. Amelia had never seen that spell before, and she had missed its incantation in the sudden cacophony of shouted spells and screams of horror. The fell portal that had opened in the atrium seemed inexhaustible as more and more of these twisted creatures joined the furiously struggling mass of screeching, burning bones. A foul, acrid stench cut the air, and Amelia almost choked on her spell when it hit her.

The mass of scrabbling bones seemed to swell and surged over a particular ward, triggering an explosion that almost knocked the defending auror's from their feet. Bits of bone and burning flesh splattered across the walls and rained down from the ceiling, but still the horde continued to advance.

She had yet to see a single wizard, and already they were nearly forced to abandon their defenses in the face of this…this unspeakable evil. Grimly, Amelia turned to give the order and swallowed her words when she heard the distinctive sound of apparition…from _behind_ their lines. Turning swiftly with her wand raised she shouted a warning, only to draw herself up short when she saw the familiar, cloaked form of Harry Potter leading a platoon of goblins.

He spat something to his entourage and they turned to sprint through the halls of the Ministry. Potter, on the other hand, ambled forward, and pushed his way toward the approaching mass of undead that was just beginning to test the second Unspeakable ward.

He cracked his staff against the floor and the atrium trembled with power. Amelia caught her breath as his cloak snapped back as if caught in an unseen gust of wind and white magic gathered around him in a visible corona.

From his mouth poured the antediluvian sound of a language that had not been spoken on Earth for many thousands of years, and the magic that had gathered around him burst in a visible shockwave that scattered the approaching horde. Rising from the ground in a slow, wondrous ascent, Potter continued to speak in a low, reverberating voice, turning his staff in a slow, deliberate motion that seemed to direct that odd, white magic into flame.

Fell screams shook the air as the undead were consumed, driven back, and cast against the stone by the fire. Amelia held her hand to her chest and staggered away from the scene in awe and terror, for she saw the great, terrible specters which lurked within the white flames, winged men who held in their hands a firebrand which was longer than most men were tall. They towered in the midst of smoke-less fire, and the undead stood no chance against them.

The fissure which had brought them sputtered and died when the fire reached its base. Potter released the flames then and fell to the ground, where he sank to a kneel behind the barricade. Amelia stepped towards him tentatively, but stopped when she saw the flames dissipating.

Incredibly, there wasn't a single scorch upon the stones, save what had been done by the Aurors. There was hardly any sign that the undead had come.

"Potter?" Amelia asked, reaching his side. She saw that he was whispering something to himself, and when he heard her voice he levered himself to his feet and pierced her with his eyes. They were still glowing bight viridian with that foreign magic, and she shuddered in the face of it.

"My name is Sephtis. Rally your soldiers, Director, this battle has only just begun," he declared, loud enough for all to hear. He turned, as if facing an unseen foe, and at once a staccato burst of ear-splitting _crack-crack-crack-crack_ shook the air. Darkly cloaked figures were striding through the atrium, as if expecting it to be clear of resistance.

Sephtis, as he had called himself, aimed his dark spear and unleased a thin bolt of red light that punched through the chest of the foremost wizard before he could so much as utter a sound of dismay. The others, seeing at once that the undead had not broken the Ministry's defenses, raised shields and began to return fire towards the barricade.

The sound of apparition began again and didn't die out as it had before. Wizards stepped from thin air in groups of ten, adding their spells to the already blinding storm of power that rained down against the wards of the Auror's barricade.

The Unspeakable's must have triggered another of their defenses, for a deafening blast of anti-sound blocked out the cacophony of magic for the briefest moment before the ground bucked beneath their feet an explosion blew the ground out from beneath the attacking wizards. Cloaked men were heaved into the air in the midst of a storm of rubble, and more than a few of them were dismembered by the force of the blast.

Amelia turned to glare at the Unspeakables but saw instead a general confusion amidst their ranks. Instead, she turned to Sephtis, who was eying the enemy advance with critical eyes and leaning on his staff.

"He comes," The enigmatic young wizard said, and somehow his voice was heard over the din of battle.

A twisting dread curled in the belly of the gaunt wizard, and he tightened his grip on Antioch's Bane in anticipation for the coming fight. He heard whispers from the Stone, all telling him that it was pointless to engage in battle here at the Ministry, but he paid them no attention. There was no hope of convincing the Aurors to give up without a fight, and he wasn't about to abandon them to death.

Amelia drew back to Shacklebolt and joined him as they cut down a trio of advancing wizards with a series of well-coordinated shield-breakers and cutting curses.

"Voldemort is coming!" she shouted. Shacklebolt glanced at her and raised his eyebrow pointedly. Amelia sighed and mouthed the words again, and he read her lips. Grimly, he nodded his head and gestured back towards the Ministry.

Voldemort had already arrived. He stepped out of the sea of blood-soaked, curse-scarred wizards that had erected a sort of magical barricade from behind which they could engage the entrenched Aurors, and it appeared as if there was no spell that could touch the Dark Lord. He waded out, through a sea of malevolent magic, and stood in no-man's land, facing down the lines of his opponents.

"Is this all that you could conjure, Amelia?" he bellowed and his voice silenced the battle as it rattled the stones. "Is this all that the Ministry could muster to face me?!"

Amelia would have stepped forward, to her death, if she had not been beaten to the punch. Sephtis hauled himself over the barricade and took three slow, uneven steps out, before the eyes of the assembled forces of Light and Dark. A hush settled over the atrium, pregnant and awful.

"Sephtis," Voldemort acknowledged his shorter opponent. "I thought I might find you here. You are…unusually well-informed for a man isolated on his island."

"You cannot hide from Death, Voldemort," Sephtis replied. "No matter whom you might ask for aid. I saw your little army. Is that all the Gates of Hell could offer you?"

"There are things far more terrible in store for you, Sephtis," Voldemort replied. "Have you come here to die, then? To meet your beloved master, face to face?"

"I have come so that those who struggle against the dark will know that they are not alone," Sephtis replied.

"Oh, but you _are_ alone, Sephtis," Voldemort taunted, slowly stepping forward.

Sephtis held out his arm and a black disc appeared upon it, wide enough to cover his chest if he held it in front of him. "I am _never_ alone."

Voldemort thrust his wand forward like a rapier, and suddenly there were three of Sephtis. Each moved in concert, leveling spears and unleashing pulsing green magic. Voldemort's curse blew through one of the illusions and dispelled it in a shower of white sparks, but he was forced to evade the counter attack. He snapped off three quick spells, one at both illusions and another slightly offset from the second, to catch Sephtis in a dodge.

The illusion on the left was dispelled, and Sephtis ducked the spell with his shield, weaving a matrix of slanted shields between them before he gathered the bits of rock and glass that had been scattered across the atrium and blasted them towards Voldemort. The Dark Lord erected a dome shield, which withstood the onslaught. His face twisted in an expression of rage, but he was interrupted from his own attack as Sephtis slipped a clever shield-piercing hex through the dome.

It struck the Dark Lord in the thigh and a chunk of meat was ripped from the impact site, revealing white bone and straining sinew.

A group of enterprising Death Eaters opened fire then, and the green light of the Killing Curse surged across the distance, piercing all of the shields that Sephtis had raised. He turned towards the array of spells and angled his staff across their path.

Incredibly, the unforgivable rebounded from the staff and arced away towards the ceiling. Sephtis began to laugh as his form shimmered and split to three, to six, to twelve. All moved in synchrony, unleashing a storm of fire that rolled across the atrium, swallowing the shields and immolating the group of wizards that had interrupted his duel.

"Sephtis!" Voldemort bellowed, cutting apart four of the illusions with a single spell. The injury on his leg had filled in with tender grayish-pink flesh, and even as he stalked among the illusions it had finished healing. "I am tired of _games!_ "

A burst of power so strong that it knocked the assembled spectators from their feet issued from the Dark Lord. Scrambling to her feet, Amelia turned to Shacklebolt. "Open fire on the Death Eaters on my mark," she whispered to him, and he relayed the orders to the rest of the Aurors. Reaching the barricade again, she saw Sephtis and Voldemort exchanging spells at such a dizzying rate that she could hardly follow the stream of magic that was pouring from one wizard to the other. It seemed that Sephtis had abandoned his illusions, at least for the moment, but even in the face of the Dark Lord's overwhelming power he stood tall and proud, deflecting and absorbing magic as it came, sidestepping those curses which could not be delayed by magic.

He dueled with an economy of magic and motion that Amelia had never seen, not even in her most talented aurors, reacting to spells as they were cast and keeping pace with the breakneck speed of Voldemort's silent magic. Every step, every spell was considered and applied so that the barest minimum of his strength was expended, and for a moment Amelia wondered how he had learned to duel more effectively than the masters of the international circuit.

Then she shifted her gaze to the distracted mass of dark wizards and raised her wand. " _Bombarda Maxima_!"

A volley of lethal bludgeoning, exploding, cutting, bone-shattering curses crossed the distance and blew through the front lines of Voldemort's forces. Their shield might have withstood the coordinated attack if it had not been joined by a sudden lance of cackling lightning from Sephtis, who stood in the center of the atrium, within arm's reach of the Dark Lord. At once, he spun about, catching Voldemort's enraged magic upon his spear and shield. He pressed forward, and Amelia saw, through smoke, the spear as it punched into Voldemort's shoulder.

Then the Dark Lord's glowing wand cracked against the dark shield that Sephtis wielded in his left arm, and the smaller wizard was thrown up and away. He cartwheeled through the air and crunched against the wall in a sickening impact.

Voldemort chuckled darkly and walked slowly towards the fallen form of the only wizard who dared to face him in combat. The aurors and the followers of the Dark Lord faced each other uncertainly in the silence, itching to cast spells but uncertain about what would happen if they did. Without Voldemort, victory was not a certainty for the dark, and the same was true for Sephtis and the aurors.

Impossibly, the young wizard was rising to his feet. His shield-arm hung limp against his side, no longer carrying the weight of his summoned bulwark, and he was leaning heavily upon his staff, but his eyes were raised defiantly to face the proud evil which stalked towards him so carelessly. Voldemort's white bone wand dangled loosely between his fingers, and his lips, cracked and broken, were twisted into a smile.

"You are weak," he declared. "You have always been weak. You may play at war with your tricks, but you haven't the strength to oppose me, servant of Death. Your god has left you to your doom."

"And you were never patient enough to grasp true power," Sephtis replied in a pained chuckle. "You sacrificed your soul, and for what? The chance to dance the tune of demons for the rest of your miserable days?"

"I am my own master," Voldemort declared, eyes flashing red. His grip had tightened upon his wand, and Sephtis straightened his posture, wincing as he felt bones grinding together in his side.

"You lie," Sephtis answered sharply. "Perhaps, in the deals you made with Hell, you bought yourself a few years of freedom. But lenders will come calling, and you've made enemies more dangerous even than those wretched beasts to whom you've thrown your soul. Look at me, and look well. For I am the one that will destroy your body when it has been totally possessed by demons."

"You'll die today," Voldemort snarled, trembling visibly.

Sephtis laughed in the face of the Dark Lord, and the sound echoed throughout the antechamber. "Strike me down, and I will return. Death cannot hold me, Voldemort, for I have achieved what you have cast aside: immortality. You can kill me a thousand times, and still I will return. And I will always be hunting you. No one outruns Death."

Voldemort raised his wand, and Sephtis squared his shoulders.

"Know this: Azkaban and her inhabitants will always strive against you, and you shall never once set foot upon her shores," Sephtis intoned as lethal magic gathered at the point of Voldemort's wand.

The Dark Lord curled his lip in a snarl and released a torrent of white-blue flames. The fire shot from his wand like a hail of bullets and disintegrated Sephtis where he stood, tearing into the stone behind him and carving scoops of molten rock from the floor.

Not even ash remained.

Voldemort threw his head back, laughing, and faced the aurors, who had recognized defeat. Just as he was about to order his attack, the whole of the atrium trembled violently as a series of explosions rippled through the Ministry from below. The wards around the underground complex fell, and Amelia used the distraction to order a withdrawal.

Voldemort dashed forward, blasting through the Unspeakable's last line of defense in a flash of white, but he only arrived in time to catch a fleeing auror with a bone-shattering hex to the thigh before the whole host of red-robed wizards and witches had twisted to the side and away.

The moment they were gone, the explosion reached the atrium with a thunderous roar that tore the stones from the walls, cracked the arched ceiling, and staggered the surviving members of Voldemort's army. He watched in disgust as the corridors of the Ministry collapsed before his eyes, and with a sneer, he stepped back from the dangerously crumbling ceiling and disapparated.

Taking his cue, the rest of his army followed suit, but a few were too slow. The city above them heaved, the roads cracked, and buildings began to topple as the ground slipped away beneath their foundations. Three high-rise structures heaved and crashed into the surrounding buildings, crushing thousands under their murderous weight. When, at long last, the dust had settled, the Ministry was no more, and three blocks of London had fallen into the sinkhole that remained.

And many miles away, in the deepest chambers of an island castle, Sephtis opened shining emerald eyes and drew a desperate, shaking breath.


	40. Interlude III: Demonic Demise

Interlude III: Demonic Demise

"He was cunning, was he not, Lucius?" Voldemort asked, gazing out across the rolling hills of the Malfoy estate. The other man winced at the Dark Lord's tone, pinching the bridge of his nose and resting his elbow on the surface of his desk.

"It appears that way," the aristocrat replied. "Without the Ministry…well, it is impossible to set up a government. We have no way to monitor the population, no census data, no legal repositories, no department of magical law enforcement, no courtrooms…it would take decades to rebuild from this."

Voldemort nodded his head slowly. "Yes, I know. We will have to make alternative plans. Take some of my men and round up the remaining members of the Wizengamot. Those who were not loyal to me. I imagine that they were not foolish enough to be present when the Ministry collapsed. When they are found, bring them here, and kill them. Spill their blood on the soil here. It will become the foundation of a new world."

"Kill them?" Lucius whispered. "Is that…necessary, my lord? They are the heads of old and respected families, of powerful magical lineages."

"I don't care who they are, Lucius," Voldemort told him quietly. He thought briefly, wondering what his most trusted follower would readily believe, and how much of the truth he should share. "There were too many survivors. I cannot have a rebel government with its own force of aurors playing games all across the country. So, destroy them."

The blonde man blinked, shaken to the core. "As…you wish," he said when the Dark Lord's crimson eyes settled upon him. "Shall I go, give the orders?"

"Yes," Voldemort said. Lucius stood and walked out of the office like a man walking to his death. Voldemort chuckled darkly, thinking of how pained the noble man must be, how sick he would feel as he condemned the ancestral magic of Britain to death and obscurity.

Then he left. There was nothing of worth remaining for him at the manor, and Voldemort had one final, pressing concern to address before he could rest. He had not expected Sephtis to be capable of injuring him, and it had taken more effort that he would ever openly admit to dispatch the nuisance. It would be…most displeasing if he should discover that the strange young man was still alive.

But it was the other things that Sephtis had said which came back to Voldemort now, as he apparated directly to one of his personal hideouts. It was here that he had conducted many of his most recent rituals, the ones that had put him into contact with the power that had enabled him to reanimate the dead. It concerned him greatly that his army of shambling corpses had been so easily dispatched by Sephtis; Voldemort had seen what the emerald-eyed nuisance had done from afar. It had amazed him, and for a moment he wondered if there was a wizard worthy of his respect in the deathly visage of that gaunt mystery.

But he had died easily enough. No, he was as weak as the rest.

Still, Voldemort had questions. So, he descended the blood-stained stairs to the dungeons below his inconspicuous cottage, nostrils flaring as the familiar yet unpleasant stench of old blood and decay reached its sickly tendrils into down his throat. It was black as pitch in the dungeon, but Voldemort could see perfectly well. He had laced his body with enough magic that he could hardly classify himself as human. He had sacrificed his ability to procreate long ago in favor of immortality. His heart laid still in his chest, dead cold.

He didn't need to breathe, although the reflex was difficult to suppress. He didn't sleep. He was beyond such…mundane desires as these. A wave of his hand lit a ring of candles at the center of the dungeon, revealing the short corridor of empty cells and the well-used ritual circle. The remains of the last human sacrifice were still rotting at the center of the intricate runic circle, and these he incinerated as an afterthought, bones and all.

Standing in the circle, Voldemort held out his hands and uttered the words that he knew would call his unearthly allies to his side. He usually offered them a form of payment, either in blood or as a live sacrifice, but in times such as these he didn't bother. They had an agreement, and they would honor it regardless of the formalities observed. So Voldemort concluded his incantation and waited.

The air in the dungeon became noticeably colder as the _thing_ crept from the shadows, materializing in the air before him. Truly, it had no physical form, but Voldemort saw it for what it was. His eyes had long since seen more than merely physical creatures.

He knew at once that what he saw was not reality, of course. The human mind was incapable of recognizing magic or spirits, and so provided its own interpretation. Voldemort saw the demon as a twisted, darkened thing with a horrible visage defined by jagged lines and empty gray eyes. He felt a gust of wind, biting cold, and knew that it was the demon's own peculiar magic seeping through the world, curling around him like a hand.

"Why have you called me here, Voldemort?"

"Who is Sephtis?"

The demon hissed its distaste. "He is an enemy. He is weak. Kill him."

"You told me that the creatures I summoned would be powerful enough to destroy the wizards," Voldemort replied shortly. "Sephtis destroyed them. You know who he is; tell me."

"You do not command me, Voldemort," was the reply. "He is an enemy. Kill him."

"What power does he wield?" the Dark Lord insisted. "Does he also consort with demons?"

"Hardly," the demon answered, ducking its head. "He is a servant of _the Enemy._ A young one, still too proud to be dangerous. You are lucky in that respect."

"Lucky? I destroyed him," Voldemort replied, lifting his chin. "He was not a challenge."

"He nearly bested you," the demon called Voldemort's bluff. "I saw it. And do not be foolish enough to think that he is dead."

"I incinerated his body."

The demon bared hideous fangs. Voldemort dismissed the image at once, and the demon's form shifted to that of a tall, empty-eyed man with pale, almost translucent skin and black hair. "You are…a child playing at the games of men," it declared. "You think that destroying his body is enough? He is a servant of _The Enemy._ He will be remade. And you left his soul intact, so it will happen much sooner. Perhaps he is already awake."

"So he was telling the truth…how has he accomplished this? Who could be so powerful?"

The demon hissed, a strange, alien sound coming from the lips of a man. "I will not speak His name."

"You are afraid," Voldemort taunted boldly. "Is he so terrible, to intimidate you so?"

The demon stepped forward, through the bounds of the ritual circle. Voldemort stiffened; the demons he had summoned before had never been able to pass that barrier. "You know nothing!" it barked. "Nothing! You think you are so great and so powerful…you are _pathetic_."

"I have achieved immortality," Voldemort declared. "I am the most feared wizard in the world. And I have greater allies than _you,_ who fears the very name of your foes. I will ask them."

"They won't tell you, little wizard," the demon purred, suddenly smiling. "If _I_ do not speak His name, neither will they. They are smarter than to invoke His wrath so lightly."

"Tell me _your_ name so that I might know your enemies," Voldemort tried.

Demons seemed to be united in their reluctance to divulge their names. Voldemort could identify a few of them by the feel of their magic, but he didn't know what they called themselves. He never knew which of his many allies would come when he called. But this, the one that spoke to him now…Voldemort recognized this as the most dangerous of the lot. He had felt great power from all of them, but this one was a subtler opponent. He was not so grandiose, not as immediately threatening. He didn't have to make grand statements or dire threats.

"I am Itzutiel," the demon told him, showing his teeth in a smile. Voldemort blinked in surprise, and the demon continued to speak. "Surprised? Don't be. I thought it was time that our relationship moved beyond our usual bartering and bickering. It's so very tiresome dancing around the issue for so long."

"I have no desire to be closer to you," Voldemort spat, taking a step back. "And I don't recognize that name."

"You wouldn't. It is older than recorded human history." The demon slid closer, and Voldemort stepped back once more. "Are you afraid of me, dear Voldemort?"

"No," Voldemort answered immediately, clenching his wand in his fist.

Itzutiel spread his arms wide. "You should be."

"We had an agreement," Voldemort hissed, raising his wand.

Itzutiel reached out and Voldemort' s magic flared, only to pass harmlessly through the demon. The cruel eviscerating hex splashed uselessly against the wall just before the wand in Voldemort's hand exploded into shards of bone. His hand, which had grasped the hilt, was torn to ribbons by the force of the blast, and Voldemort swallowed his scream as agony tore down the nerves in his arm.

"We did," Itzutiel agreed. "But I lied. Didn't anyone warn you not to make deals with the Devil?"

Voldemort scowled darkly and summoned his power once more. It surged around him visibly, cracking through the air as blue and purple shocks of lightning. The demon laughed but stayed at a distance. "Depart from this place. I release you."

"Release me?" the demon purred. "Do you really believe that you have authority here? Did you think that your summons would have brought me here against my will?"

"I am Lord Voldemort!" the Dark Lord screeched. "You will depart from this place at once!"

"You are _mine,_ " Itzutiel hissed. His body crunched and shifted, but before Voldemort could even cast a spell his whole body was seized by unspeakable agony. His jaw snapped shut on his tongue as the muscles in his jaw constricted, and he staggered to the side as his vision exploded into a thousand colors. Distantly, he was aware of someone screaming their throat raw, and he almost relished the sound until he realized that it was his own voice.

He found himself on the ground with a demon leaning over him. "I gave you this body," Itzutiel was saying, reaching down to run his hands across Voldemort's chest. They weren't really hands at all, weren't really physical, but Voldemort felt their cold touch on his skin. He shuddered. "You have called upon my power to enhance your mind. You should have listened to your old teachers…there is always a price to be paid for power."

"We…you…" Voldemort spat blood onto the stone but couldn't muster the strength to fight. Itzutiel shushed him, a mockery of gentleness. The demon leaned down and smiled, inches from Voldemort's face.

"You really are an endearing mortal. So confident in your ignorance," he cooed. "It's almost a shame, really."

"I can…bring you another. Someone else," Voldemort whispered. "Sephtis himself."

"What would I want with Sephtis?" Itzutiel shook his head. "No, I will deal with the troublesome _judge_ myself. You and me, well, we're going to have such _fun_ together, you know. I might even let you watch."

Voldemort's eyes flashed. "Kill me, then."

"I won't kill you," Itzutiel replied. "You might wish that I had. Possession is terribly uncomfortable, as I'm sure you know. Ah, but you've never witnessed a demon at work, not really. Those games that you played with corpses were just the start. You heard how they screamed, those who were already dead."

"It's a mistake to let me live," Voldemort replied. "I'll destroy you eventually. That's a promise, and one that'll keep."

"Still so confident?" Itzutiel taunted, leaning forward. "We might as well get started, then. It's been so long since I've walked Earth…I have to make up for lost time."

Voldemort managed a final heave before he was pressed against the blood-stained stone. Itzutiel straddled the Dark lord's hips and reared up like a snake preparing to strike. His form shifted mid-movement, and Voldemort raised his injured hand to shield his face before he felt the ice-cold magic of the demon sliding through his skin like a knife-edge, pushing into his belly. It was like a hand which pressed up beneath his ribs.

He opened his mouth in a soundless scream as Itzutiel crushed his dead heart in that invisible fist, feeling his body fall limp against his will. Helpless, he suffered in silence as the demon seeped through his skin like poison, somehow managing to feel impossibly pleased in the process. Voldemort realized that he could sense the demon now in his mind as well as his body. His once formidable magic seemed pathetic in the face of this…unimaginable being. So revolting and powerful…Voldemort would never have called upon the demon if he had truly seen…if he had understood…

It was over as quickly as it began. Voldemort felt small and inconsequential in his own mind. He watched through his own eyes as his body rose up, graceful and arrogant. A laugh of satisfaction welled up in his belly, and Voldemort realized with dawning horror that the demon had physically crawled through his skin. He could feel the gash that remained, a tear in his flesh.

The demon looked down purposefully to show him the wound.

 _We're going to have so much fun._

That was when he began to feel the burn. It was hardly physical, since he couldn't really feel what his body was feeling, not to any real capacity. It felt like it had always felt days after he had made a horcrux…like there was a bleeding wound that refused to heal. An intense, determined sort of pain that refused to leave him alone or subside. This one only intensified, suddenly just the same and then worse than it had ever been before. Voldemort felt his very _soul_ screaming, and if he could have he would have joined in. He heard himself laughing instead.

He took several steps. "This feels _good. Ah,_ but what a wonderful body you have," Itzutiel said aloud. He stretched his arms wide, shaking out the ruined hand for a moment. Flexing the shredded muscles proved more than a little painful, so the demon pulsed its wicked magic through the appendage and beheld the newly healed wound. Terrible, blackened scars remained, but it was perfectly functional.

"That's better," Itzutiel murmured, dropping his hand. He glanced around for a moment, feeling his magic churn, unsettled. He still felt Voldemort, the pathetic mortal, writhing in his mind. He remembered now, the pressing _need_ that came with possession, and his magic was already reacting, swelling up.

He didn't even attempt to control himself. A wave of red-orange flame poured from his palms and cascaded through the dungeon. It swallowed stone and metal alike, and Itzutiel admired its progress as another surge poured through him. He groaned in near sexual pleasure, shuddering as magic poured from his body in waves. Soon, the whole house was burning in an untamable fire, and Itzutiel was kneeling in its midst, feeling the sharp, familiar pain of its heat.

Eventually the scorched, near-skeletal body of the Dark Lord ambled from the fire, which had already begun to pour across the countryside. A few steps later and his flesh had already begun to reform, blackened and sick. His eyes, once blue and sharp, were now pale white and empty.

Once his body was whole, he straightened up and disappeared. In his place, a cloud of ashes wafted to the ground, swallowed shortly thereafter by insatiable hellfire.


	41. Part 4 Chapter 1

Part 4 Chapter 1

Kyle Leggert had photographed his fair share of terrible things in his career as a journalist. His specialty, after all, was warzones and all the nightmare fuel that came along with them. Nothing that he had ever done, however, could possibly compare to this moment. He didn't know if it was because he was standing on the soil of his home country and looking on perhaps one of the most incredible scenes of devastation that he had witnessed, or if it was because this was the second time in as many days that he was presented with a vista of horror, or if it was the gritty, sweaty, exhausted expressions of the men that had spent the better part of the last seventy two hours fighting the insatiable fires that were continuing even now to ravish the British countryside.

Kyle didn't even touch his camera. That was how shocked he was to stand on a hill overlooking miles and miles of English land, once covered in sparse forests and rolling green hills, reduced now to a blackened husk. The soil itself had cracked in great fissures as the heat from the unnatural fires had partially melted the topsoil, and the result was a sort of glossy, crunchy surface, like a blanket of fresh snow with a layer of ice across the top.

There were men sitting in loose circles, covered in ash and speaking quietly with each other, watching the fires as tall as a house continuing to rage less than a mile away, where another team of a hundred men fought to contain it. Kyle had taken pictures earlier of the firefighters, all residents of neighboring counties who had volunteered to come, as they tried again and again to douse the flames. First, they used water, but that had no effect. The heat was too intense; it boiled water to nothing ten feet from the flames.

They tried a variety of fire extinguishers, from carbon dioxide foam to a combination of ceramic dusts, until finally resorting to earthen barriers, hastily erected. At the site that Kyle was currently resting, they had collapsed the excavated dirt wall onto the flames using explosives to shift several tons of soil at once. The deep, wide trench was then filled with water and the volunteers had retreated to a safe distance to watch, hoping beyond hope that this would have put a stop to the unstoppable.

Another city was only a half mile behind them, inhabited by another six thousand people. Evacuations were underway already, just in case the barriers failed to stop the inexorable red flame. Two cities already had been claimed by this fire. Thousands of people had died before a response could be organized, before anyone even knew what was happening. This was the third day.

Kyle glanced across the blackened horizon, unable to keep his eyes from the unbelievable sight, and his breath escaped from his lungs in a stunned hiss.

"It's something," one of the volunteers offered, looking out in the same direction. Kyle glanced at the man incredulously, unable to see much of his face beyond the ash that clung to his sweaty skin like a second set of clothes. "My house was that way, you know. About two miles."

He gestured at the ruined countryside.

Kyle had assumed that the scene in London was the worst thing that he would ever see in his life. A sinkhole almost a mile wide had swallowed almost three blocks of the city, toppling skyscrapers and plunging the whole city into a fog of dust and smoke. A blackout of electricity in the surrounding district, and the petty fires that continued to spring up as emergency crews rooted through the rubble, searching desperately, hopelessly for survivors, had turned the whole city into a scene straight out of an apocalypse movie.

Kyle had stood at the edge of the sinkhole, looking down into the dust. The earth had settled almost eighty feet, and there were concerns that the rest of the area around the crater would become unstable as the earth strived to reach equilibrium.

That had been like something from a nightmare. Kyle kept wondering when he would wake up.

But this…this was something else. Eight thousand people had died in London, but that catastrophe had only extended a few blocks. What he was witnessing now…miles and miles of the countryside were scared, likely for a century to come, two whole cities had been erased, and the fires were _still burning._

 _How can they still be burning?_ Kyle wondered. _There isn't anything to burn._

"I've been fighting fires for fifteen years," a voice startled him from his thoughts. Kyle realized he must had spoken aloud. "And I've never seen anything like that. Never. That's Hellfire. I swear to God himself."

Kyle laughed almost hysterically. "The Devil set fire to England?" he exclaimed, meeting the weary man's eyes. The firefighter was an older fellow, with the kind of stolid strength one might expect in an old tree or a slab of granite. His eyes glittered harshly in contrast to his soot-stained features.

"This is no laughing matter," he hissed, folding burly arms over his chest. "And you had best not speak of the Devil in these parts. He's closer than a skeptic like you might think."

Kyle swallowed his laughter thickly and nodded, eyes returning unbidden to the fissures that snaked across the plain below them. There were a few bodies, barely visible. Men who had been too slow to escape, or those who had collapsed of exhaustion at the wrong time. Brave men.

Dead men.

Kyle Leggert lifted his camera and took a picture of a skeletal corpse that was reaching one arm towards the hill. The light reflected gruesomely in the glassy sockets of the skull, and at the proper angle it almost appeared that there was fire burning where a man's eyes should have been.

Snapping the photo, Kyle shuddered and imagined that he could see that skeletal hand clenching to a fist before his eyes.

"I'll take my leave. See how the others are doing," he muttered, more to himself than anyone around. They didn't even glance his way.

Kyle already knew the title of the article that he would write. And he already knew the picture that would make the headline.

 _The Devil Set Fire to England_

* * *

His scream choked off in a cough that wracked his body. Shoulder-blades arched up from the cold stone only to smack painfully back down as the air was expelled from his lungs, and Sephtis squeezed his eyes shut against a wave of pain in his chest. Breathing deeply through clenched teeth, he eventually glanced down and saw his body, whole, laid out before him. Scars and all.

The thick green fissure in his chest was pulsing angrily, and he raised a hand to brush his knuckles across it, wincing as it twanged tenderly. The fact that he was naked was somewhat embarrassing, but an errant thought was all that it took to summon Death's cloak to his shoulders, and it settled around him in a loose embrace, forming a vest and trousers from nothing as Sephtis shakily found his feet.

Antioch's Bane responded to his call as well, and he used the dark staff to hold his weight when his old injuries proved troublesome. Once he was on his feet he was able to relax, and he stretched with a grimace. A gentle wizard's light revealed the inner chamber of Azkaban's warding scheme, a place saturated with wild magic, and at once, through the insight of the Stone, he knew that El had revived him here to expedite the process.

"I thought you had learned your lesson from Quirrel. I that not why I left you with your disability?" the familiar voice broke Sephtis' thoughts, and he saw the shade of Death hovering before the entrance to the inner sanctum.

Sephtis rubbed the back of his neck, shrugged. "Sorry?"

"You have to trust me. It is too late for you to reach for victory of your own strength. You will find only despair by relying upon yourself. I am here for you. But you have to trust me. I warned you against confronting Voldemort in the Ministry," Death admonished sharply. "Why didn't you listen?"

"I need to be seen as an enemy of Voldemort so that people know where to run," Sephtis explained, rubbing his eyes. "I wasn't about to abandon the Aurors to inevitable death, and I knew that they would not run unless they knew that they were outmatched. My death gave them the fear that they required to withdraw. Why did you deliver me into the hands of our enemy? You could have given victory to me then, and the war would be over."

Death hovered close to his servant and spoke quietly. "It is not the place of mortals to decide the time and manner of God's battles. Voldemort had yet to succumb to the demons with whom he had made pacts, destroying his body would have only extended the war. I had hoped, through you, to end this conflict before it consumed all of Britain. But you, in arrogance and impatience, rushed ahead. It has been two days. That is time that you did not have to waste."

Sephtis bit his tongue and nodded. "I did not know your plans," was all he said.

"You should remember that, the next time you think that you know better than Death how to win a war against demons. Go, now. Voldemort has been consumed, and in his place a terror walks; it will descend upon Hogwarts tomorrow," Death informed him. The specter faded and Sephtis loped through the door into the dimly lit halls of Azkaban castle. A parting whisper teased at his ear. "The castle is the end."

Sephtis staggered when he regained his feet, overcompensating for an injury that no longer existed. He hissed as phantom pain flared in his leg as he reached down, feeling for the place where the bone had been shredded, embedded into the muscles of his thigh.

Stunned, he tore open his tunic and looked down, but the scars remained. They were clearer now than before, easily distinguishable against his skin. The emerald glow from the Killing Curse scar pulsed with his heartbeat, and he slowly folded the cloth over his chest once more, tentatively stretching out his limbs.

 _Thank you,_ he thought, a small smile on his lips. _I will remember that lesson._

What he found when he ascended the spiral staircase to his office in the castle was pandemonium. Four goblins, all of varying age and stature, were squabbling with each other, squared off around his desk. Redtooth was among them, wearing his armor and brandishing a long, curved dagger. The others, Sephtis recognized as members of his council, but he didn't care for their names. Sweeping into the room, he silenced their arguments with his mere presence.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked, looking at Redtooth.

"My lord!" the goblin exclaimed, dropping his dagger and stepping back, teeth bared and eyes wide. "How can this be?"

Sephtis glanced at the others, and saw some small confusion evident in their eyes. "I have returned. My duties are not complete," he explained shortly. "What have I missed in my short absence?"

"Returned? That's all you have to say?" one of the councilmen sneered. "I think you deserted the battlefield, a coward. It is more plausible than your _resurrection._ "

Sephtis stepped forward and peered down at the goblin. "You are a petty child," he replied dismissively. "I was, in fact, defeated at Voldemort's hands. He destroyed my body. By the power of my master, I have returned. I care not if you doubt me; there is a war on, and I have no time for games. Now, tell me what has happened since the battle."

"The Aurors rounded up as many people as they could and came here," Redtooth answered, beginning slowly. "About three hundred witches and wizards, if you count the children. Only fifty-six are Aurors. Madam Bones and her second, Shacklebolt, assumed de facto authority over the wizards on the island. We," he gestured to the four goblins, "were bickering over your title. The Goblin Nation has protocols, but you never named a successor."

"The next battle is upon us already," Sephtis began, "there is no time for politics. I will go and speak with the wizards. As for you, go and make sure the goblins stand ready to go to the aid of Hogwarts. With the fall of the Ministry, I fear that we have little time."

Redtooth nodded. "I hope you're planning to tell me how, exactly, you managed to survive the battle. Was it an illusion? Why did it take you two days to return?"

"It was no illusion," Sephtis replied, remembering the searing heat of blue-white fire. "I was killed. I have returned. The specifics, I leave to Death himself."

With that, he hobbled out of the office, pausing upon the parapets to look out over the ocean. He had to remind himself that he no longer needed to limp, so he chose to walk rather than apparate. With only his thoughts and the distant sounds of the ocean as company, he composed himself before he stumbled upon the Auror's camp. Men and women were slumped beside their meagre belongings, speaking to one another over small, guttering magical flames. There wasn't a single tent to be found, but a few of the wizards with modest skills at conjuring had whipped together some chairs, although these were few and far between.

Sephtis found Amelia and her second sitting beside a fire with a few of the older Aurors, discussing the loss of the Ministry in undertones. They fell silent as he approached, and a few of them scrambled to their feet to stare at him like a ghost.

"Sephtis…" Amelia greeted slowly. "I take it that you survived the battle after all. I'm relieved."

"I did not," Sephtis replied, conjuring himself a chair. "May I?"

The head of the now nonexistent DMLE waved him on, and he settled in beside the fire, laying his staff across his legs. "It was a mistake for me to confront Voldemort at the Ministry. It was…not the proper time."

"Wait," Shacklebolt cut in, "what do you mean that you didn't survive?"

"I'm sure you saw my incineration," Sephtis answered, waving his hand. He knew that he could not fudge the details with this man, but he also knew that the Mage Hunter would have some objections to talk of soul magic or necromancy. He would have to tread carefully. "My body was destroyed. But my duties have not been fulfilled, so I was not allowed to pass on. The magic concentrated here at the island is enough to restore simple flesh and blood."

Shacklebolt narrowed his eyes. "Voldemort accomplished much the same thing through necromancy," he pointed out.

"The difference is that Voldemort was attempting to resurrect himself. I, however, did not rely upon my own strength. No, it was the will of one who is greater than myself that brought me back," Sephtis answered, ruefully thinking of Death's earlier admonishment. "Regardless of the means, I am here, and I have grave news."

"What news could you bring from the afterlife?" Amelia asked, only half joking.

"You may not believe in higher powers, but I can tell you this: there are very dangerous, very powerful beings who have become interested in this little turf war. Voldemort was making deals with ancient and terrible creatures; it was how he augmented his magic. At first, it was only simple things, but with time the rituals he conducted grew more dangerous," Sephtis explained. "I studied many of these rituals; it was why books on Dark magic were found in my possessions during my trial. I knew that the creatures Voldemort consorted with would eventually consume him. And they have."

"How do you know?" Kingsley asked, setting aside the other man's comment about his trial. It didn't matter now whether Sephtis was innocent or not; the war made such things trivial. Sephtis met the man's eyes for a moment and saw that the Mage Hunter believed him. He also saw that the older man had seen the kind of thing that Sephtis was describing. Amelia caught onto this immediately and sat forward in her chair.

"I have made my own covenants," Sephtis replied. "There are beings in the spirit realm that take exception to Voldemort's meddling. One of them took me under his wing as his student. Now, I am His mortal Hand."

One of the other Aurors snorted. "You expect us to believe this? Shack, you can't be taking this guy seriously."

"You saw him die," Amelia pointed out. "Yet here he is. Do _you_ know of any way to accomplish that?"

This silenced the objections of their small audience. Shacklebolt, however, was looking tense, and his hand was resting on the hilt of a dagger at his belt. "What is the name of this being?"

"His name is El," Sephtis replied. Releasing a gust of air, Shacklebolt fell back into his chair and shook his head.

"Merlin…"

Amelia furrowed her brow. "Who is El?"

Sephtis waved her off. "He is what he is. Now, Shacklebolt, you have seen the results of the kind of rituals that Voldemort was conducting during your time as a Mage Hunter. Didn't anyone within your old brotherhood wonder how he became so powerful so quickly?"

"The Guild considered investigating him, but they, as an international interest, couldn't intervene in a provincial dispute without authorization from the ICW, which was pretending that the war in Britain didn't exist," Shacklebolt explained. "I did investigate, on my own, back in the first war. I had my suspicions, and a few of us wanted to present our findings, but we were stonewalled at every turn. By the time we got anyone to listen, Voldemort got himself killed at Godric's Hollow and everyone spent their time pretending that the war had never happened in the first place."

Sephtis snorted. "If they had allowed you to speak they would have known that demons are more difficult to kill than _that,_ " he mused. "But, it is the past. Now, you are perhaps wondering how he was able to muster that army of inferi that I destroyed at the ministry?"

Amelia nodded, and Sephtis turned his staff in his hands. "They were not inferi, but a kind of animated homunculi which was possessed by a lesser demon from the spirit realm. They are the same kind of creature as a dementor, although less dangerous. Voldemort, as a human, couldn't channel the magic necessary to summon and bind more powerful demons. I fear that it will be worse when he takes his army to Hogwarts."

The mood around the campfire became very solemn very quickly. "If Dumbledore and his Order are smart, they'll already have started evacuating students," Shacklebolt thought aloud.

"And take them where?" Amelia argued, pinching her nose. "No one is safe in their homes, not after the battle at the Ministry. Not after what the Death Eaters have done. The Dark lord's forces swept across Britain, rounded up the heads of every ancient family, and murdered them."

Sephtis winced and hung his head. "Then it has begun already. I arranged a collection of emergency portkeys with the Headmaster. In the event of an attack, the students can use them to come here, to this island."

"The island doesn't have the supplies to support them for very long," Amelia pointed out. "A few days at most. I reported to the muggle government after the battle, but they didn't say anything to us. Sent us on our way without so much as an acknowledgement of thanks for the warning."

"Yes, I had hoped that the muggles would support the island with food and fresh water, but they refused to believe me when I informed them of the threat. Their stubbornness will be their undoing. In fact, because the Ministry imprisoned me for crimes I had not committed, I was attacked by the Queen's court wizards after my audience with her," Sephtis explained. "Without their aid I'm afraid there wasn't much of an alternative. We've been stealing from warehouses and framing Voldemort, hoping that the muggle government would investigate and start to gear up for war. If we lose then the Dark Lord will look next to the muggles."

"They wouldn't stand a chance against him…not without international aid," Amelia whispered, looking rather pale. "But they might prove more amenable to an alliance now…after London."

"It all comes down to Hogwarts," Sephtis changed the subject at once. He didn't want to think about London. About the people who laid dead there, buried under the rubble. "It was my mistake at the Ministry that cost us two days, but there is still some time. I believe the attack will come within the week. I can muster more than five hundred goblin warriors. You have your Aurors, and the Headmaster has the Order of the Phoenix, although they are few in number and untrained. With the walls and wards of Hogwarts…I believe that we have a chance."

"It won't matter if Voldemort decides to come to the battle himself," Shacklebolt grumbled. "If what you said is true, then our enemy is not a mortal Dark Wizard. The Mage Hunter's work to _prevent_ demons from walking the Earth, we've never attempted to destroy a demon that has already possessed a body. I don't think there's been an example of that sort of necromancy for thousands of years…since before the Fall of Atlantis."

"Voldemort will be there," Sephtis answered quietly. "I will face him. You must concern yourselves primarily with making sure the students reach the island. Then, you will have your hands full with the Dark Lord's army of misguided dark wizard and summoned abominations. I will not be able to dispel them for you as I did at the Ministry."

"Sorry to point this out," Amelia began, "but you didn't fare too well against him at the Ministry, and you're telling me that he's gotten stronger? It's not very reassuring."

"I allowed pride to blind me, and paid the price," Sephtis answered her honestly. "Things will be different this time. El does not suffer his enemies to walk freely among mortals."

Shacklebolt caught Amelia's eye and nodded. "If Sephtis is truly a servant of El, then he _might_ be a match for Voldemort. According to the teachings of the Guild, El was the one who comissioned the first of the Mage Hunters. He gave us the spells which are applied in our work. He is…well, the Guild is rather old-fashioned in calling him a God."

Amelia scrunched up her nose at the description. "So Sephtis here will face Voldemort. There are other preparations to make before the battle…we should get to work."

At that, Sephtis levered himself to his feet. "I must speak to my advisers. Then I will go to Hogwarts to warn Dumbledore…I am not sure that he knows what to expect from his old pupil, and if he underestimates Voldemort…well, it would go poorly for him."

Shacklebolt nodded to the gaunt wizard and received a hesitant, if polite, response. He moved between the Auror campfires quietly, saying nothing, and eventually ambled toward the dilapidated village further along the road.


	42. Part 4 Chapter 2

Part 4 Chapter 2

Dobby popped into his master's office quietly and wrung his hands together before shaking his head and opening his mouth to get the pale wizard's attention. Green eyes opened before the elf could make a sound and settled upon the diminutive little creature for a moment before Sephtis beckoned Dobby closer. The wizard was kneeling on the floor behind his desk, and Dobby shuffled his feet nervously as he approached.

"Master Sephtis."

"Dobby. How are you? Have you recovered from your injuries?"

Dobby nodded his head. "Yes, Dobby is being all better. Dobby saw a ship in the water. Dobby thought that Master Sephtis might want to know."

"How far away? I haven't felt anything on the wards…" Sephtis muttered, slowly rising to his feet and stretching his arms. The elf shrugged his little shoulders.

"Dobby is not be knowing how far."

Sephtis reached down with his hand. "Show me."

The elf reached up and suddenly they were standing on the cliff's edge, overlooking the North Sea. Azkaban was an island south of the Orkney islands, erased from most modern maps and concealed under the most extensive wards known to magic. The island was still approachable by sea, however, so long as the coordinates were known. A muggle navigator wouldn't be able to see the island unless they passed the boundary of the wards, but it would appear to them once they crossed the threshold. Sephtis saw the long, sleek form of a British Type 45 destroyer, visible only by the running lights and its low silhouette. The North Sea was calm, and the waves were not high enough to conceal its steady approach.

Sephtis glanced down. "Thank you, Dobby," he said. "Tell Redtooth that I am going to speak with the captain of that ship."

The elf nodded, disappearing with a _pop._ Sephtis glanced back across the sea and closed his eyes, visualizing the position of the boat and willing himself across the distance. His apparition was silent and instantaneous, and it dropped him onto the deck of the destroyer directly in front of two armed marines. Both of them reacted to his appearance by raising their weapons and voices, and Sephtis was forced to shield himself against gunfire.

Swiping his arm, he summoned their weapons and banished them to the deck, where they clattered harmlessly. Even before their primary rifles were gone, the marines had drawn side-arms, but they held their fire.

"Don't move!" one of them ordered.

"Marines! Hold!" a booming voice cut across the deck. Sephtis watched as a broad-shouldered, graying fellow strode purposefully toward the confrontation. The rest of the vessel's crew had begun to pour out onto the deck, many of them looking like they had just rolled out of their bunks, but at the orders of the older, crisply dressed officer none of them raised their weapons.

The man whom Sephtis assumed was the captain stopped beside his marines and nodded sharply. The pair of them saluted and stepped back. "You should know better than to startle fighting men, wizard," the captain drawled, turning towards the darkly clad figure on his deck. "I take it you're the one we've been looking for."

"That depends on why you've been looking for me," Sephtis replied slowly.

The captain gave him a small, dangerous grin. "This is the _HMS_ _Merlin._ Given the recent destruction of Richmond and the devastation in London, Her Majesty the Queen decided to offer her apologies to you for the regrettable conclusion of your last meeting. The _HMS Merlin_ and her crew have been debriefed and are ready to assist you in the struggle against the revolutionary known as Voldemort."

Sephtis glanced at the crew of the ship, sensed that few of them were wizards, and pursed his lips. "How many infantry?"

"Three platoons."

"Anchor your ship beside the island, I'm sure you have the coordinates," Sephtis said, after a moment's silence. "A battle is coming on the mainland. I'll have one of my generals give you a rundown. In the meantime, do not allow any ships from the mainland to reach the island unless your men are escorting them."

"Who should I ask for at the castle?"

"Redtooth," Sephtis replied, glancing briefly at the marines that had shot at him. "Tell your men to bring high caliber weaponry or explosives if you have them. And bayonets."

Before the captain could ask him why, Sephtis was gone, just as quickly as he had appeared.

* * *

Dumbledore shouldn't have been surprised when Sephtis appeared in his office, even though the wards of Hogwarts should have prevented apparition or portkey travel. Still, he startled badly when the sharp _crack_ of his appearance broke the strained silence of his office, and his kneejerk reaction scattered the papers that he had been attempting to review across the desk in front of him as his hand skittered towards his wand, which was concealed in his robes. When he saw who it was, he relaxed only slightly.

"Sephtis," he said, after a moment to consider the gaunt figure. "I heard that you were dead."

Sephtis smiled, and it was an unfeeling expression. "I got better. May I?" he gestured to a seat and sat down before Dumbledore could agree. The older man folded his arms over his chest and blinked his eyes slowly.

"You're here to warn me, aren't you?" Dumbledore said, finally. "Rest assured that I remember our agreement. The portkeys were distributed by each Head of House last week."

"That's good," Sephtis replied. "We'll need them tomorrow."

Dumbledore straightened. "Tomorrow? How do you know?" Severus hadn't said anything to him…although he had looked rather pale and shaken this morning. "Has something happened?"

"Voldemort succumbed at last to the demons that he had thought to conquer," Sephtis replied. "Death has told me that the abomination intends to unleash hell on Earth, quite literally, and it starts here, at Hogwarts, in two days."

Dumbledore closed his eyes. "Demons…it has been a long time since anyone took the threat of demons seriously. At least anyone outside of the Hunter's Guild. A very long time. In fact, I remember back in 1893, when I was a young lad…"

"Dumbledore," Sephtis interrupted. "I need you to understand that the enemy we face is no longer Tom Riddle. He is not the student that you taught. He is not human any longer. When he comes to this castle, he will bring with him horrors that have slumbered these long years since the time of Atlantis. You must protect your students. Do not try to confront Voldemort."

The older man glared for a moment before releasing his breath in a sigh. "You know me well, in spite of the fact that we never saw eye to eye. I had hoped to become your mentor, you know. I would have made you a great man."

"I didn't want to be a great man, Dumbledore," Sephtis replied softly. "I only ever knew of two great men, Dumbledore: yourself and Voldemort. I had no desire to be like either of you. Still, it doesn't really matter anymore. I must know that I can rely upon you in the battle; the students must be evacuated before the walls are breached."

Albus fell back in his chair, stroking his beard. "What could be so terrible that it could break the walls of this castle? Dark Wizards have tried their hands at Hogwarts before; all have failed to seize it. There is more magic here than in any other castle in the world, save, perhaps, for Azkaban. There are ancient wards on that foul island that even I could not hope to understand…"

"The island of Azkaban is the result of demonic magic," Sephtis answered the unspoken question. "It is a corrupt, ruined place. Forever it will bear the marks of Jarl Azkaban's folly. Hogwarts never had the dubious benefit of necromancy or pacts with the spirit realm."

"You think that Voldemort can bring this castle down," Dumbledore stated unequivocally. Sephtis nodded.

"He will. The wards here are man-made, and their power comes only from the Earth beneath our feet. Voldemort wields the power of a demon; his energy is inexhaustible, his knowledge unfathomable. The world itself will groan in agony so long as he is alive, for his magic is corrupt and his presence… _unnatural_ ," Sephtis explained, lowering his voice and enunciating each word sharply.

"I understand," Dumbledore cut him off. "I won't seek him out, though it pains me to leave the task to someone else, even one who has Death himself at his side."

Sephtis searched Dumbledore's eyes for a moment and nodded. "Good."

They sat in silence for some time before the gaunt wizard slowly regained his feet and turned his head towards the window. "Did Sirius arrive at Hogwarts?"

"He did. He told me that you had tortured some of your prisoners," Dumbledore answered carefully. Sephtis nodded.

"I did. The war won't end with Voldemort; I needed to know locations of Death Eater safe-houses. I wanted names of their lieutenants, an estimate of their fighting strength, and any clandestine operations that they intended to conduct," Sephtis explained. "I admit; I didn't learn as much as I would have liked. It seems that Voldemort's trust in his followers is limited."

"It was the same in the last war. We never resorted to such measures, chiefly because we imagined ourselves to be better men than our enemies. But, also because it is futile to try and take information from a man that knows nothing." Dumbledore shrugged after a moment, deciding to let the matter rest. "I'll tell Sirius you asked after him."

"I'll see you tomorrow morning, early," Sephtis offered as a farewell. "I'm bringing an army. I would recommend that you evacuate the school if I didn't think that it would paint targets on the backs of every household in wizarding Britain."

"You think Voldemort would go for the children instead of the castle?"

"What use does he have for a castle?" Sephtis asked rhetorically, shaking his head. "With children, especially children of Magic, he could create for himself demonic followers. It would be an army against which no mortal nation could hope to stand. This, I feel, is why Death intervened in my life. If Voldemort succeeds here, at Hogwarts, then all of Earth will know Hell."

"Let us hope that we can find victory on the battlefield, then," Dumbledore murmured, stroking his beard. "Oh, would you mind taking the path down to the gate before you apparate? If only for my peace of mind."

Sephtis shrugged. He had intended to return to Azkaban from the office, but he figured a short walk wouldn't make a difference. He didn't say anything else to the headmaster as he stepped out of the office, past the gargoyle, and down the stairs.

The castle was just the same as he remembered it, but there was a palpable air of anxiety throughout the halls that had never been so thick during Harry's school years. Sure, there had been fear aplenty during the attacks of the basilisk, but now there was an added flavor of despair that turned Sephtis' stomach. Silence weighed heavily upon him as he walked, and his eyes lingered on the shadows in the alcoves and in the suits of armor that he passed.

He had just reached the landing for the second floor when a soft voice gave him pause. "Who are you?"

He turned his head and saw Luna standing framed in the doorway. He hardly recognized her; two years had been enough to completely change her from a young girl to a young woman. It was her eyes, however, that caught his attention, as they always had before, and he knew at once who she was when he saw them.

"I am Sephtis," he answered her, feeling an emptiness in his belly. Luna stepped out of the doorway, into a dusky ray of moonlight. The weak light danced in her platinum blonde hair and across her pale white skin. Shadows gathered beneath her eyes, and a frown was on her lips.

"I…I thought I you were someone that I knew," she said.

Sephtis nodded. "I was, once, Harry Potter, the boy that you knew. But…no longer."

"What happened?"

"You don't want to hear it, Luna," Sephtis whispered, shaking his head. The girl caught an errant lock of her hair and twisted it between her fingers.

"Tell me. You never tried to hide things from me before," she refuted, quietly but firmly. "I read all about your trial. I know you didn't do the things that they said. I know you didn't kill Ginny."

A pain that Sephtis had forgotten returned to him then, and he clenched his fingers around the haft of Antioch's Bane, struggling to speak. It had been easier to admit his failure in court than it was now, with the eyes of his friend pleading silently with him. "You're mostly right," he allowed, at last. "I didn't open the chamber or set the basilisk on the students. As for Ginny…I may not have killed her, but I didn't save her, either."

"What happened?" Luna repeated, and this time the question seemed to represent a broader idea.

Sephtis shrugged, glanced at the window. "Voldemort had sealed his soul into a book. A diary. Ginny came into possession of the book somehow, and it corrupted her. Controlled her. She was the Heir of Slytherin; or rather the Heir of Slytherin had taken her for his own. She went down into the chamber that night and Voldemort intended to consume her soul to restore himself. He had already begun the process when I found her. You see, he had intended for her body to be discovered in the morning, so that I would be blamed for her death. I knew that I had no choice but to fight him. So, I did."

Here, he paused and breathed deeply through his nose. "He told me…he told me that he would kill Ginny if I destroyed the diary containing his soul. He summoned the basilisk…and I killed it. I collapsed the ceiling on it. Then I destroyed the diary, despite Voldemort's threat. And Ginny died."

"Oh," Luna whispered. "And after that?"

"They sent me to Azkaban. I thought…I thought that it was what I was meant to do. I thought I would be strong enough to stand against the dementors, to set things right. I never told you much about my relationship with Death, but he had been preparing me for the prison all year. I realized that during my trial, and in arrogance assumed that I was ready. I challenged the dementors when I arrived on the island. They…they broke me," Sephtis' voice caught. "You can't imagine what they were like. Always touching you…cold, like ice…sliding up into your mind steadily, day after day, scraping more of your life away with every moment. They came to my cell in groups. At first, I could fight them, especially if they were alone, but they learned that quickly enough. I don't remember anything past the second day."

"Oh, Harry," Luna whispered, moving as if she was about to reach for him but hesitating at the last moment. Sephtis shrugged.

"Death came to me, told me that I had made a promise. He put me back together, piece by piece, set me on my feet, gave me the strength I needed. Showed me how to set things right. But I'm…I'm not Harry Potter anymore, Luna," Sephtis finished. "I don't even remember most of his life."

"You remembered me," Luna argued.

Sephtis nodded, "You…our friendship was one of the things that I protected most. It wasn't until the end that they managed to…that they finally broke through."

"You're Harry," Luna decided, shuffling towards him.

"Do I feel like Harry?" Sephtis asked, referring to Luna's special connection with magic. Her Sight. Frowning, she was forced to shake her head. "I am not him. He is only a part of the whole. My name is Sephtis now."

Luna finally reached out and touched his arm. She started as if a shock had traveled down her arm when her fingers brushed against his skin through the sleeves of his robe, and he saw her shudder as she dropped her hand as if he had burned her. "That's quite the curse you have, Sephtis," she said, looking away and biting her lip. "Do you…did you know that you're cursed?"

"It is not a curse," Sephtis replied, hazarding a guess at what she had felt. "It is the covenant. I swore a pact with Death, and he has rewarded me with his talismans, the Hallows of legend. I…am not alone anymore, Luna."

"It's a curse," Luna rebutted, eyes flashing. "Just because you asked for it doesn't change what it is. He's…you're not _human_ anymore, Harry. Have you looked at yourself lately?"

Sephtis spoke past the lump in his throat. "It is the price I paid," he whispered. "I would have died many times over if it were not for my master. He is…like a father to me. The only one I have ever known."

Luna's eyes were shiny with tears. "You were my only friend, Harry. It was…terrible here when you were gone. I had nightmares, thinking about how you suffered in Azkaban. I don't know what to think about this…about you. I always dreamed that you would return one day, that you'd be exonerated. I always thought things would be different."

"Did you think that I would return to Hogwarts? Did you think I would continue with my studies like nothing happened?" Sephtis whispered, somewhat incredulous. Finally, he shook his head. "Were it not for Death, I would have died in Azkaban."

"I know," Luna answered him after a moment, fussing with her hair again. "You're right…I was silly. I thought that life was a fairytale and not a tragedy."

Sephtis sighed and held out his hand to her. Luna grasped it between her own, like she had done on the train in another life, and he smiled weakly. "There's a battle coming to Hogwarts. I want you to stay safe for me."

"You'll find me when it's over?" Luna whispered, suddenly looking younger than her years. "Before you go?"

Sephtis nodded. "I will. When I go to walk with Death, I want to know that you went on to live a good life in the world that I will help to protect. I want to know that at least one of us could live a normal life and die a peaceful death. I want to remember your face as the years pass me by unscathed."

The tears which had gathered in Luna's eyes fell now, tracing a path down her cheeks and shining in the dim moonlight. "Okay," she whispered. "I…can't you come and see me, once or twice? You don't have to disappear forever?"

"I can," Sephtis said, feeling El's approval at the words. "In fact, if you call for me, I will come, no matter where I am. If not in person…then as a dream."

"You were always a dream to me, Harry," Luna whispered.

Sephtis' smile cracked and he nodded his head slowly, as if she had confirmed for him something that he had always suspected. "Goodbye, Luna."

"Goodbye."

He walked away from her then, descending the stairs to the courtyard of Hogwarts, where he paused to breathe in the fresh autumn air. He glanced at the stars, blinked the unshed tears from his eyes, and disappeared without a sound.


	43. Part 4 Chapter 3

Part 4 Chapter 3

Learning about goblins in a debriefing was something ne and unusual. It had everyone checking their calendar to see if it was April Fool's Day, but by the time the major had finished his lecture the members of Forty-Four Commando had begun to realize that this was serious. When he explained who was responsible for the WMD that had destroyed Richmond and the collapse of London's streets, there were a few looks of recognition among the members of the brigade, but the rest were left wondering who the hell this Voldemort character thought he was.

Lance Corporal Pat Wilkins knew enough about Forty-Four Commando that he was only _slightly_ surprised to discover that it was more than a covert operations branch of the Royal Marines. He knew that Forty-Four Commando had fought in World War II, and had been ostensibly disbanded after consolidation with Forty. He knew that they only accepted a specific subset of marines, mostly those that had proved themselves in battle at least once. Even then, it was almost impossible to get selected for Forty-Four if you didn't have a family member who had served in the past.

To learn that Forty-Four was Her Majesty's response to the interference of a wizard named Grindelwald in World War II, well, Pat was surprised only to discover that the wizard was magical, as opposed to the typical sleight of hand and occult nonsense that so appealed to Adolf Hitler. He was more than slightly surprised to find that some of his brothers in arms were wizards themselves. Many of them had parents or siblings that were wizards, but they were not magical themselves. And, the few like Pat, had no magical relatives of their own and no magic.

He almost felt left out.

Still, that hadn't been as exciting—terrifying—as the news that there was a war going on in Britain. That a group of insurgents had set themselves up against a so-called Dark Lord. That this Dark Lord had declared war on the Crown by unleashing hellfire on Richmond, killing thousands and ruining more than fifty square miles of English countryside.

Even _that_ didn't shock him as much as seeing a goblin face to face. Pat's platoon had disembarked from the _HMS Merlin,_ trudging up the winding, serpentine path to the castle gates, where they were met by eerie silence. It was at that moment that a squad of stocky, squat creatures in shining plate armor trotted briskly from the shadows, wielding pikes, crossbows, and shortswords like a bunch of Renaissance reenactors. They came to a halt ten paces away, cracked their heels together in unison, and bellowed a thunderous greeting.

One of the group stepped forward, clapped his arm across his chest. "Welcome to Azkaban, humans."

The island was like an angry bee's hive. There were goblins and wizards walking briskly everywhere you looked, moving crates of arms and armor from one place to another, strapping ammunition and plates of metal to one another, tearing down tents, dousing fires. The marine platoons didn't really know what to do with themselves after they had been escorted to the open field between the castle and the island village, so they sat in a loose circle and watched the mayhem.

"Jesus, there must he hundreds of them," Christopher said, nudging Pat's shoulder. He glanced to the side and saw a marching column of goblins making their way along the path, towards the castle.

A few goblins had joined the marine platoons as messengers, and one of them noticed Christopher. "Aye, five hundred," he answered. "They'll be off to Hogwarts soon enough. Probably a few hours."

"What are we up against?" Pat asked the strange creature, fidgeting where he sat.

The goblin spat in the mud. "Wizards."

Pat furrowed his brow. "Just wizards? How many?"

"Ach, probably more than two hundred," the goblin answered him. "I'd wager my left testicle that the Dark Lord brings himself some _zerachtun._ "

"What?"

"Undead," the goblin explained flippantly. "He had them at the ministry."

"Undead," Pat repeated dumbly. "You're pulling my leg."

"I'm what?" the goblin reared back with a snarling scoff. "Don't be silly. Anyway, the King took care of that rabble easily enough at the Ministry. Won't have that luxury this time around."

Pat was beginning to feel out of his depth. Hell, he had felt that way since the Major stood up and told them that a wizard named Voldemort had set fire to England... "King?"

"Aye. Tough bastard," the goblin drawled. "I thought you'd met him…went over to your ship earlier."

One of the other marines coughed. "Yeah, we met. He's, ah…human."

"Yeah," the goblin growled, spitting in the mud again. "He is."

Pat left it at that. As time passed, more and more goblins poured out of the village until the field was packed with armored warriors, all jostling each other with nervous energy as their commanders walked among the mob, checking armor and clapping shoulder pauldrons with their fists. The marines had stood up to join the throng at this point, and Master Sergeant Mathers, Drake, and Williams were speaking with a few of the goblin commanders.

Another goblin passed Pat by with a pike in his arms, and he couldn't restrain himself any longer. "What good are all these melee weapons going to do against wizards?"

"Wizards are hopeless in close quarters," the goblin answered. "The trick is getting to them. That's what shields are for. And crossbows."

"Aren't we defending a castle?" Pat asked, scratching his chin.

The goblin nodded. "Aye. Makes our job easier."

"So…don't you want to be able to shoot them from the walls? Why don't you guys have guns?" Pat asked.

The goblin sighed. "it's harder to enchant bullets; bolts are bigger. Anything without an enchantment is useless against a wizard. They've got wards. So we use crossbows."

"I see," Pat replied, starting to understand. "So, what will we be doing?"

"That's up to your commanders. I just hope you don't get me killed while you're at it."

Lieutenant Mathers gathered his men around him and spoke over the din of voices. "Alright! We'll be headed over to this castle in a half-hour. Once we arrive we'll be assigned a section of the walls and a series of hallways. Our job is to hold the wall against the attacking forces. If we must fall back, we use the hallways to stage ambushes. It is essential that we hold for at least fifteen minutes, to allow the children to evacuate."

"Children?"

"Aye, the bastard Voldemort has got his eyes on a school. Which happens to be in a castle," the lieutenant replied. "We'll sort the details out when we get there. The battle shouldn't start until tomorrow…"

A sudden alarm rose up at the front of the crowd, near the gates. At once, the goblins formed orderly columns. The messenger who had pushed his way through the marines to stand at the center of their circle spat in the dirt. Again.

"The coward attacked early. We're moving out. Expect contact when we arrive."

"How are we getting there?" Christopher asked as he glanced at the front of the column. He could see something happening…but he didn't understand. Whole sections of the army were twisting to the side and disappearing into thin air.

"Portkey," the messenger said, drawing a chain from his armor. "Grab on. Move!"

The lieutenant seized the chain, and his men followed suit. They could see a similar procedure being followed by the other platoons, but Pat didn't have time voice a question before their aide barked a harsh command and the world seemed to twist and crunch into a tunnel of colors.

The platoon crashed into the ground in complete disarray. Pat retched but managed to keep his stomach as he scrabbled in the dirt. His ears were ringing, and his vision was blurry, but as his senses cleared he began to wish that they hadn't.

A sound like thunder was rolling over what appeared to be an open field just outside the walls of a towering hilltop fortress. He could see cloaked figures on top of the walls, firing magic down towards the field. He also saw companies of goblins forming into a ragged battle-line and engaging a swarm of screeching, clawing monsters.

"Up! Get up you witless bastards!" their aide was screaming, holding his sword and shield and stepping over the disoriented marines. "Dammit, get up!"

A white shock of lightning split the air above their heads and blew the field apart. A column of dirt and scorched embers blew into the air, and through the falling rubble came the horde. Pat raised his weapon opening fire by reflex as he knelt beside the marine to his left.

The goblin ducked at the harsh sound of gunfire, gnashing his teeth as the monsters that could only be the _zerachtun_ continued to push forward. Pat realized in that moment that the goblin battle-line would be surrounded if the marines didn't make a stand.

It was almost impossible to see the creatures in twilight, but the marines laid down a blanket of gunfire anyway. The whole approach was bathed in a storm of tracers and writhing beasts, but they pressed on like the tide of an ocean, and it was apparent that they would be upon the marines in moments.

"We have to fall back!" the lieutenant screamed over the din of explosions, screams, and clashing metal.

"Hold your ground, you coward!" the goblin roared, swinging his weapon through the air and facing the storm with his shoulders squared. Pat ceased fire, fastened his bayonet in place and felt his blood pounding in his ears as he rushed to stand by the goblin's side.

"A line! Form a line!" the lieutenant was shouting, but a ragged, disorganized attempt was all that could be made before the swarm crashed into them. The first wave leapt into the air and came down with limbs wide. They were…human. Pat realized this as the first one crashed into his bayonet, skewering itself upon the six-inch blade.

Its skin was blackened and peeling, and it revealed shockingly white bone and a sickening combination of rotted flesh and twisted corruption. The face was nothing but bone and sinew, with utterly empty, expressionless eyes. Pat fired his weapon twice, threw the creature off his weapon slammed the butt of his rifle against the next, Christopher, at his right side, intercepted another as it came in low, hoping to tackle them to the ground.

To his left, however, the horrors had taken down a marine and were tearing at him even as his comrades rushed forward with their bayonets. Pat was forced to step back or else face attacks from two angles, and this forced Christopher to join him.

Leaving the goblin alone. 'You bastards!" the diminutive creature was screaming, slicing the head from the shoulders of one of the abominations and taking the arms off another as it lunged for him. his shield crunched through the skull of a third as his boot silenced a fourth. He was a storm of limbs, an unstoppable force, an immovable object.

There were too many. Six or more were coming at him next, and Pat was preoccupied, wrestling with his rifle and firing his weapon in blind faith.

Suddenly, a blinding light washed over them from behind, and the creature which had been pressing forward screeched and fell back on its haunches. Pat put four bullets in its skull before his rifle clicked—empty.

He risked a glance back and saw the impossible. A man was flying over the goblin lines, wreathed in rolling white flames that glowed too brightly for Pat to look at directly. He was holding a staff in his hand, and his robes were snapping at the air around him.

The fire was taking shape, moving like something alive, growing thicker around the man and reaching out with tendrils to form arms…legs…

It was an avatar of flame.

"Voldemort!" a voice like God's own thunder boomed. "Show yourself! Voldemort!"

The undead were fleeing before this holy avenger, but they were caught and incinerated as the avatar stepped through the battlefield, cutting through the horde with a fiery sword.

"My faithful warriors, go to the castle. At once," the voice commanded. "They have need of your aid in the North."

Pat couldn't look away from the wizard…the man that he assumed must be King. For who else could be so powerful, but a King?

" _That_ is why he is our king," the goblin said to them, wiping black blood from his sword in the grass. His armor was caked with the stuff, but he didn't seem that bothered by it. "Come, to the castle."

They left the avenging avatar of flame in the field, where he continued to smite down the undead with ease, calling for the Dark Lord to face him.

The castle was in complete disarray. Wizards, robed in red, were running through the halls carrying their wounded or taking chunks of rubble towards the battle. The goblin warriors were directed to the parapets and the courtyard, where it seemed that the enemy had already breached the gates.

Pat had time in this brief respite to look around himself and see that three of the marines in their platoon were missing. "What happened? Where's Richards?" he asked, fearing the answer.

One of the others shook his head, eyes haunted. "They tore him apart."

The Lieutenant cut that conversation off at the head. "He will be honored. We go to the courtyard; it's a chokepoint. Perfect for the heavy machine-gun."

Billy, their gunner, was still toting the thing on his back. He looked exhausted, but he gave a resolute nod as they turned to follow the company of goblins that were heading through the castle to the courtyard.

It was not unlike a gunfight, this magical war. Spells shot through the air like tracer bullets, burning bright paths in the eyes of the soldiers. The goblins poured into the courtyard, screaming bloody murder and opening fire on the darkly robed figures that Pat assumed were enemy combatants. Shimmering gold shields sprung from the ground, deflecting some of the fire, and that was when he realized that this wasn't any like any battlefield that he was familiar with.

Billy shrugged the tripod down behind a chest-high stone wall. Two of the others fed the ammunition into the gun as he cranked the lever, took hold of the triggers, and unleashed hell.

The gatehouse was tall and thin, allowing only two or three men to stand abreast, and the storm of bullets proved too strong for the magical shields to withstand for long. With men standing out in the open, confident in their magic, it became a slaughter.

At least…for about five seconds.

"What the hell are you doing?" the goblin screamed. "Get down. Get down!"

Pat dove to the side on faith, and would later count himself lucky, although he didn't feel very lucky as a shock of lightning struck the impromptu gun emplacement. It was the same spell that they had seen in the field, except now it vaporized the stones like they were nothing and scattered shards of rock through the air. The men manning the machine-gun were blown back ten meters, and they crashed into the dirt, unmoving. Billy, however, was right where he'd been standing, stripped of flesh. A pillar of ash.

Scrambling to his feet with ringing ears, Pat fired down the tunnel of the gate house, ducking return fire as he crawled to where the goblins were firing their own weapon.

Fire, move, fire, move. Never stand in one place. It was elementary, really…

Then the whole gatehouse blew up. It exploded inward, knocking the defenders on their asses and raining them with fist-sized stones. Pat, who had covered his face with his arms, grunted as a particularly large chunk of rock cracked into his chest. The smoke swirled violently and dissipated in a flash of fire, and the thing which stalked forward, through the rubble, was not unlike the undead that Pat had seen in the fields outside of the castle.

It walked in a teetering, drunken manner, swinging thin, skeletal limbs and turning its skull to survey the field of battle. But this one was different from the others…there was a fire in its eyes, and patches of dark flesh were spreading across its bones as Pat watched. By the time it was in the center of the courtyard, it almost looked like a human once again, but its pale gray flesh was webbed with blackened veins, and its face was misshapen, lacking a nose. Gaping nostrils flared grotesquely as its eyes laid upon the soldiers who were recovering from the blast.

"Pathetic," it hissed in a voice that pierced the sounds of battle. It seemed to speak directly into Pat's mind.

"Fall back!" one of the nearby goblins shouted, dragging Pat with him as he ducked through the rubble. "Back! To the castle!"

The shambling horror raised its arms theatrically and cackled as a wave of fire rushed out from its palms. Pat surged to his feet and away, but he knew already that he wouldn't be able to outpace the shockwave. He cringed reflexively, ducking his head, and took three steps before he realized that he wasn't on fire. Opening his eyes, he glanced back, and saw an old man stepping through the fire with a wand in his hands, protecting the retreat of the goblins and the surviving marines.

Christopher fell in beside pat as they ran, looking a little singed and panting for breath. "Jesus Christ," he whispered, laying eyes upon the clash of titans that was unfolding before them.

"Tom! Cease this foolishness, Tom! It didn't have to come to this!" the old man bellowed in a voice far louder than he appeared capable of projecting. His enemy, the unnatural horror with such a common name, allowed the flames to die and gestured widely with one arm.

The older man laid eyes upon his enemy them, through smoke, and swayed with dismay. "Tom…what have you done?"

"I am not Tom," was the reply. Pat and Christopher, having rounded the corner of the hall, checked their weapons and aimed down the corridor, towards the courtyard. He had a clear view of the old man, but he could see nothing of their enemies. Not yet.

"I can't let you into the castle, demon," the old man declared.

"Dumbledore…you cannot stop me. Nothing can stop me. I am a power beyond your comprehension," the abomination replied.

That must have been an unseen signal, for the battle was joined not moments after the last syllable faded uselessly into the cacophony of the raging storm outside the walls. A power unlike any that pat had yet witnessed was unleashed by the old man, who held the wand before him like a fencer's blade, warded by a pulsing, shimmering golden sphere. His attacks were quick and sharp like the staccato notes of a conductor, and for a moment Pat had hope that this strange wizard would save them.

Then he died.

It was instant. He blinked and almost missed it. A burst of power washed over the castle, shaking the ground and the stone walls like an earthquake, and then, with a joyous exclamation, the abomination waded through the old man's shields, weathered the magical assault, and crushed the robed man with a gesture of his hand. Bones snapped, flesh ripped, and blood exploded into mist. The shaking stopped, and the old man was gone.

"Fire!"

A hail of bullets and crossbow bolts closed the gap, only to be deflected without so much as a blink of surprise.

"Mortals," the creature hissed, like a voice speaking directly into Pat's ear. "You are outmatched. Why do you continue to fight?"

They had to fall back. It was their only choice. Pat and the goblins reached the same conclusion, and with a command from the Lieutenant they were swiftly running through the halls.

The courtyard was lost. The gatehouse was lost. Pat could only hope that evacuations had already completed, or this battle was about to turn to a slaughter.

The marines and their goblin allies reached the great-hall and saw that the evacuations, in fact, were not complete. There were at least twenty children huddle din groups throughout the large, open room, some of them with tears in their eyes and others gazing empty-eyed at the double doors.

The Lieutenant saw them and fell to his knees. "Get out! You have to get out!"

An older woman stepped from the crowd. "There's no-where to go! Their portkeys are blocked by a ward. The corridors are swarming with dark wizards."

"Get to the back of the hall!" the Lieutenant barked. "Quickly, now. Go!"

The goblins had overturned the tables and created barricades in the center of the room. Pat watched this with disdain. "What use is that? They'll just blow them away like so much…"

Chris glanced at him, shrugged. "I'm almost out of juice," he offered, hefting his rifle. "Got an extra mag?"

"No," Pat replied. He handed over his sidearm. "Use that."

"What use is this?" Christopher mimicked with an unfeeling grin.

Then the doors blew from their hinges and the horror shambled through, rolling his shoulders like a boxer preparing for a match. "Look who's reached the end of the line," he chuckled. A hail of fire was once again deflected or absorbed. The monster was untouchable.

"You will not touch them," another voice broke through the sound of gunfire. All sound suddenly ceased as a man materialized in the air in front of the overturned tables, with his back towards the remaining defenders. The last sounds of a losing battle continued to reach them. "It is you who has reached his end…Itzutiel."

"Ah, so you know…my name, boy," the demon drawled. He threw his head back to speak towards the sky. "Is this all that you could muster to face me, El?"

"You do not have the right to speak his name," the darkly robed man replied. Pat realized that this was the same man that had appeared above them in the fields to destroy the undead. The King.

A goblin rushed to his side and pulled him away from the tables. "Stay back," he whispered. "This is beyond our abilities. Just stay out of their way."

"It is over," Itzutiel replied. "You cannot hope to match my power, mortal. You had your chance to stop this…you failed."

"You should never have set foot on this world, Itzutiel," was the cold reply. "If you think that you can defeat me so easily, then why do you not try?"

"So be it," the demon hissed. Pat felt the air in the room move as pressure dropped near the corrupted Dark Lord, and he ducked his head just as the first eruption of power shook the ground and stunned all of those who stood as spectators.

The King drew himself up, spread his arms and weathered the pure concussive blast with only a slight back-step. His own power, white and magnificent, poured out and wrapped around him like armor. The demon continued to assault him, first with shocks of energy, then with blasts of explosive magic, and at last with fire.

It raged crimson and hotter than the sun, churning the stones and choking the air with sweltering heat, but still the king stood amidst the power of his enemy, unharmed, unmoving. Then he retaliated, and pat was forced to avert his eyes from the blinding power.

" _I am a servant of El,"_ he boomed, and his voice resonated in the pit of Pat's belly. " _Your power is corrupt. Be gone from this world."_

Pat shuddered, crouched down, and held himself still, shaking his head and trembling like a child. He could see nothing, but he heard the demon screaming, he heard stone cracking, he felt the earth lurching beneath his feet.

Oh, my God, he thought. I'm going to die.

He raised his head and felt a slap of hot, burning wind across his face. His eyes dried up and his skin cracked, but still he gazed at the maelstrom that was spinning around the demon and the King. Stones the size of small cars were spinning like tops, swinging around them in erratic circles, swept up by the fiery storm. Red flames sputtered and reached out like desperate hands to touch the black cloak of the impossible King. The demon was on its knees, a snarl on its face, stripped down to blackened bones by the unrelenting white magic.

" _Be gone!"_

"This will never end, Sephtis!" the demon whispered, though it was audible in pat's mind, as well as everyone else who dared to look upon the battle. "I will return once more. I can never die."

"Neither can I," was the reply. "I'll wait for you, and I'll destroy you again."

Whatever reply might have come was cut off as the demon's strength abruptly deserted him. Just as quickly as he had crushed the old man, he was broken, burned away. Amid the light, Pat saw a blackened, twisted thing attempting to rise from the ground, only for Sephtis' magic to take hold of it.

It screamed. Oh, how it screamed. The sound died out immediately, but it continued to ring endlessly in Pat's ears, growing and growing in intensity, until at last, as an explosion ripped out from the place where the King was standing, silence.

Pat swayed, feeling like a dream. The world was collapsing around him as he watched, stones falling in chunks, but time seemed to drag on, second after second. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything. He could only watch, frozen, as Sephtis staggered, fell, and whatever magic which had held Time at bay was released.

The castle crumbled around his ears, and blackness claimed him.


	44. Epilogue

Epilogue

He opened his eyes and regretted it. Still, after a few blinks he managed to keep them open long enough to realize that he wasn't in the castle anymore; there was a canvas stretched above him, the fabric of a tent. He tried to lift his head, look around, but he couldn't so much as turn his head to the side, so he was forced to simply roll his eyes, trying to see what was around him. It was quiet…perfectly quiet. Not a single sound…

He saw someone sitting beside him and stiffened. Finally, he managed to look, even if his muscles protested the motion quite viciously, and he saw the dark cloak and pale skin of the King. The man was watching him.

 _You're awake._

The man's mouth wasn't moving. "Seems that way," Pat replied, feeling the words odd in his mouth. He rolled his tongue around for a moment, and the King offered him water.

 _You are a brave warrior. I am proud to have fought by your side._

"Um…thanks," Pat replied. "Why are you talking in my head?"

 _If I could…I would undo what has been done to you. But my skills are destructive…I have no ability to heal you. I am sorry. You're hearing was permanently damaged by the battle._

Pat closed his eyes and released a breath through his nose, slowly. "Oh." He couldn't hear himself talk, and suddenly he realized why it felt strange for him to speak.

He felt something touch his arm, and opened his eyes again to see the King standing over him. _It is finished. Have peace._

The impossible man walked away, and Pat Wilkins said nothing to him. When he was gone, he glanced back at the ceiling and felt tears in his eyes. "It is finished…"

* * *

One year After the Battle

Like a cornered animal, he cowered. Strewn around him, the bodies of his victims rotted, featureless lumps in the darkness, but he hadn't been disgusted by such things for years. He couldn't remember killing them, however, and that was what had initially bothered him. When he noticed the gnawing, unnatural hunger which crept upon him slowly, insidiously, like boiling a frog, it was already too late. By that time, he was powerless to stop what he knew was possession.

By that time, he had already known who was coming for him.

Since then, it was all he could do to avoid the tireless pursuer that trailed him, and the very few members of the old guard that he had stayed in touch with eventually disappeared, amidst a trail of bodies, and he knew that they had been found and executed. He wasn't even sorry for them. It was for the best, after all. Knowing what they had become…it was better that they had died.

In truth, it would have been better if _he,_ too, had been found and killed. But the animal instinct that had become his motivation wouldn't allow him to roll over and accept his death. Standing at the edge of the tallest building in London, he couldn't take that last, merciful step. Perhaps it was the demon that had sequestered itself within him…or perhaps he was simply too much of a coward to do what he knew was necessary.

But he knew that it would be over soon. There was no escaping Sephtis…that much he knew with utter certainty. A year of watching the hunter track down his compatriots was enough.

The door to his hideaway splintered under a blast of magic, and the man scampered over the bodies of his victims in a desperate crawl, only to find himself at the windowless wall. He turned, and faced the silhouette of the hunter, framed in the dusty light.

"Severus Snape," Sephtis murmured, stepping over one of the oldest, nearly skeletal corpses.

That had been his name, once. He knew it. Trembling, he inched forward, on his knees, scraping at his face with his nails. "Please, Sephtis."

"You know what you have become," Sephtis said, gesturing with his hand. The festering Dark Mark was bared to the light, an oozing wound, and tendrils of blackened corruption had spread all the way to Severus' neck.

"Kill me swiftly," Severus whispered. He had never had the courage to finish the act…not himself. But he could surrender. That, he was familiar with. He had done it many times.

"You deserve that much, at least," Sephtis replied with a sharp nod. "I am sorry that it came to this."

Severus laughed, and it was an eerie sound like a creaking oak. "I always knew…deep down. The wages of sin..."

White fire flared, and in an instant Severus Snape was gone. Septhis glanced around the room at the bodies of the people that had been caught by the lesser demon who had possessed Snape through the mark, and offered a silent prayer as he cleansed the area of Hell's taint. When he was finished the cold basement was a scorched, empty place.

With nothing left, Sephtis ascended the stairs once more and breathed the fresh air. It was finished. Snape had been the last…the most resourceful of the possessed followers of Voldemort. But there was yet one more thing that he had to do.

* * *

Two Years After the Battle

He watched dispassionately as the magic that he had summoned claimed chunks of the island, piece by piece, throwing stone and soil into the broiling ocean below. The power that surged through him was unfathomable, impossible, too much for any human to withstand, and his body was showing the strain. His skin was pulsing and glowing with red light, and any scrap of clothing that hadn't been a part of Death's cloak had long since turned to ash.

The ferry which contained those last few who had yet to vacate the island had paused in its journey to observe. The castle was falling away now stone by stone, reclaimed by the restless sea. Sephtis almost smiled.

Clouds were gathering above him, a storm that rumbled and shook the air, and he closed his eyes against the whipping rain, tilting his head back and feeling El's power in his body, so bright and strong that it was eating at his very flesh. He was…fuel, like wood for flame.

At last, the island was gone, and Sephtis gazed one last time upon the place where Azkaban had been, before he, too, disappeared into the waves. "It is finished…"

* * *

Five Years After the Battle

Redtooth and the rest of the Council fidgeted nervously as Sephtis appeared in the meeting room without so much as a sound to announce his presence. One moment, he was nowhere to be found, and the next he was stepping past the chairs of the generals and taking his seat at the head of the table. The goblins eyed him warily, some with blatant dislike for the obvious display of magic, and others with suspicion, for this was the first time in a very long time that he had shown magic to the goblins.

"I have fulfilled my promise," he began, gesturing out, towards the city that he had built. "I promised that I would rebuild Sanctum. And New Sanctum's foundations are complete. A new government has been approved by the Crown for the wizards in Britain, and a new treaty was signed between wizards and goblins, one which favored goblins heavily. It is finished. The time has come to discuss succession."

"We will have the trial by blood," one of the generals suggested. "We shall have the elders council appoint a successor, as is their right."

"There is no goblin in this city that could defeat me," Sephtis replied, and Redtooth fidgeted in his seat. While the wizard might be right, he had never been one to brag. "Besides, I have held the hand of the goblin people for long enough. You blamed the downfall of your race on wizards for too long; it was your own actions that led you to death at Sanctum. I saved you, and I expect better from you now. There will be no appointment of a successor, no trial by blood. I will not name a favorite. I came here today to tell you this: I am leaving. Tomorrow. The goblins must decide how they will proceed into the new world that we made through fire and blood at Hogwarts. So, go. Decide."

The council stared at him, aghast. Even Redtooth felt a pit of simmering anger in his belly at the manner that their king had addressed them, and his hands had curled to fists as Sephtis stood up and raked his harsh eyes across the assemblage.

"You are a strong people," he finished. "But do not be so prideful as to forget your own mistakes."

When he whisked out of the conference room, Redtooth slammed to his feet and followed, leaving his overturned chair in his wake. He burst into the King's office, as he had done oftentimes before when Sephtis was being particularly thick-headed, and leveled a glare at the gaunt human.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"What I should have done weeks ago," Sephtis replied. "I was…reluctant. The duties I have here are easier than what I look forward to in the coming years. I was using them as a crutch. It was time to put an end to that."

"You're an idiot," Redtooth declared. "I always knew that, but this is too far. The city will be chaos! It might mean another war! A war for succession."

"Do something about it," Sephtis replied. "If you are so afraid that your own people will turn on each other, then you have proven my point. I held this nation together after the war, for five years. In spite of their growing hatred for me, in spite of their lack of respect for the things I have done, I fulfilled my promises. And now, you want more? I refuse to hold the hand of this nation any longer. I said that already."

"You…you…you can't just up and leave!" Redtooth nearly whined. "We've only just finished the foundations! There's still years of work to be done!"

"I could build this city for generations, Redtooth, and it would never match the memory you have of Sanctum. This is not Sanctum as it was, but New Sanctum. I cannot restore your memories to reality; I can only make it possible for you, and your people, to make new memories in this new city. So…quit badgering me and go, do what is right for your people," Sephtis urged him.

Redtooth bit his tongue to stop a scathing insult from breaking free and breathed through his nose. "Fine," he bit out. "And what will you be doing?"

"What I must," Sephtis answered cryptically. The goblin snorted and shook his head.

They stood in awkward silence until Redtooth finally capitulated to the growing urge and sighed. "I will see you again, right?"

"I didn't know you cared, Redtooth," Sephtis replied with a half-smile. He limped around the side of his desk and laid his hand on the goblin's shoulder.

"I owe you too much to let you disappear," Redtooth explained.

"Maybe you will," Sephtis finally said, quietly. "I don't know."

"Well, then, take my sword with you. Go on."

Unbuckling the thing from his belt was such a foreign experience that Redtooth fumbled with the strap for a moment. When he finally held it out, his hands were shaking. Sephtis covered the goblin's fingers with his own long, pale digits and smiled.

"Thank you," he said, graciously. "I will keep this weapon with me always."

Redtooth dropped his hand and grunted. "So, you think I should take the crown?"

"I said I wasn't naming a favorite," Sephtis shot back, turning away from his friend.

"All you had to do was ask, you know," Redtooth grumbled. "Didn't have to make it so hard."

"Get on with it," Sephtis said over his shoulder. "I have places to be."

Redtooth bared his teeth and departed from the office. He hesitated outside the door for just a moment, thinking that this might just be the last time that he saw his King, but then he kept walking, slowly, to the duty that awaited him.

* * *

Sephtis wiped the blood from his sword and winced, feeling the mortal cuts in his side as he straightened up. Glancing down, he saw the bloodied face of the man that he had killed staring up at him, and he shook his head. "What a waste."

The radio on his chest beeped, and he activated it with one hand while he dismissed his sword, concealing it upon his body as he always did. "Frost," he sighed into the receiver.

"Where the fuck are you?"

"Got sidetracked," he answered brusquely. He looked at the dead man again, and felt that he had accomplished what he had been called here to do. Another ancient evil, another foolish man, another day.

"What's your status?"

"Wounded," Sephtis replied. It was time, now that he was finished, to let his identity go. As it turned out, death was a good way to accomplish that. "It's bad."

"Shit. Stay where you are, Frost, I'm on my way," the soldier on the other end of the radio sounded panicked. A familiar ache in Sephtis' chest reminded him of the suffering he caused every time he did this…

"Won't make it," he whispered, already feeling the effects of his injuries. He could have healed himself, of course. After so long, he had honed his skills at battlefield healing to the point where he could recover from almost anything if he had enough time. He had gotten around to healing other people at some point as well, too late to save the ones that mattered. But he wouldn't heal himself now. It was the easy way…a clean exit from his cover. Then he could move on, unattached, to the next mission. "It was…an honor serving…with you."

"Don't talk like that," the other man answered him. "I'm just around the corner, dammit!"

He heard approaching footsteps and stumbled against the wall just in time for his partner, a man named Will Evers, to pull him up and kneel at his side. Sephtis looked at the dirt-caked, sweat-streaked face of the man that had become his friend over these last weeks of humping it through North Africa.

"Damn, damn, damn," he was hissing, looking at the mess that was Sephtis' chest. "What'd you do, get into a sword fight with a lawnmower?"

"You…should see…the other guy," Sephtis bantered easily, coughing on the last word. "what about…the others? Everyone…make it..."

"Yeah, Frost, they made it," Will whispered. "Everyone made it but you. Like always."

"End of the line," Sephtis whispered, a grim smile on his lips. "Always…knew I'd…reach it…eventually."

Will nodded his head, and the sight of tears in the warrior's eyes made Sephtis' heart lurch in his chest. "Hey…you…take care of them. You'll make…a damn good officer…Will," Sephtis whispered. "I…trust you."

"Stay with me, Frost," Will cried, taking hold of the pale man's shoulders. He seemed paler now, dangerously so. "Come on."

Scooping the wounded man up, Will found his feet and started to walk. "Will…" Sephtis wheezed. "Don't…do this. Let…me go."

"No, I won't."

Sephtis smiled, feeling the pain like an old friend. It was just like Will… "I'm sorry," he breathed.

And, like usual, darkness claimed him.

This time, however, he found himself awake again almost immediately, without the usual intermission with El. He was standing in a wooded area, far different from the windswept rocks and sand of Northern Africa. He looked at the sky and wondered if this was a dream or if he was alive, standing on the grass in morning dew.

He heard a voice, soft and comforting, and he turned to face it as it grew louder. He saw a woman walking with a child cradled in her arms, swaying with every step and singing under her breath. He recognized the mother, and his breath caught as he heard her voice. It was a voice that he had missed for…a long time.

"Oh!" she exclaimed when she saw him. "I had just…I called for you. I thought you wouldn't come, even though you'd promised."

"I'm here," Sephtis offered, looking at the sky again. He smiled. "Hello, Luna."

"Hello, Harry."

His lips twitched. "That's not my name."

She walked close to him, brushing hair from the children's face. "What is your name, then?"

"I've had a lot of names since we last spoke. It's been…"

"Ten years," Luna supplied. She quirked an eyebrow. "Lose track of time?"

"I must've," Sephtis shrugged. "Why…why didn't you call for me sooner?"

"You never came to see me after the battle," Luna said pointedly, and Sephtis winced. "I had to hear about it from Hermione. She was there, you know. In the great hall. She saw your battle with…Itzutiel? Is that what you called him, at the end?"

"Yes," Sephtis whispered. "That was what I called him. What did she say about me? About the battle?"

"You terrified her," Luna said. "You always did."

He nodded. It was as he had expected. "I…never went to you because I…I wanted you to live without me. Without war and death and pain. I thought that I would only make things harder for you."

"It was harder for me without you than it had ever been with you," Luna chided him softly. "I survived while you were in Azkaban. Then you got out…but it didn't seem like it. It was the same as it was before. You never came back from that place, Harry."

"I'm sorry," he offered.

"It doesn't matter. I thought you'd want to see…my daughter," Luna held the child out, disturbing the girl from her slumber. She yawned wide and curled her tiny fists in Luna's hair, looking mightily displeased. "Go on."

Hesitantly, Sephtis reached out and gathered the girl in his arms. She looked up at him with the widest blue-green eyes he had ever seen, popping a thumb into her mouth and kicking her feet in his robes. She was…amazing. He stared down at her, a smile growing on his face. "She's wonderful," he whispered. "What's her name?"

"I want you to name her," Luna said. Sephtis glanced at the woman and frowned.

"What does your husband think of that?"

Luna laughed brightly. "I told him that I was still thinking, and brought her out here. She's only a week old, you know."

Sephtis hummed and cradled the infant close, feeling more alive than he had felt in all his years. The child seemed just as awed by him as he was of the child, and one of her hands reached out to touch his nose as he looked into her eyes.

"Why do you want me to name her?"

Luna smoothed the fabric of her dress and smiled as she looked around herself at the forest. "I grew up knowing Death. Not like you do, of course, but the Sight was enough. I don't want that for my daughter, but it made me who I am. I think, maybe, that you're just enough of Death to make a lasting impression. She'll remember you."

"She's one-week old," Sephtis argued, glancing at the woman. "And I don't know if growing up with Death did either of us any good."

"You saved the world," Luna replied. "And she'll remember. I can feel it."

Sephtis shrugged. "Okay."

He looked at the girl again and tickled her nose. She giggled past her thumb and grabbed his long forefinger in one hand. "I name you Sola; may you be a light in the lives of many."

He didn't expect the surge of magic that pulsed through him, as well as the child. Apparently, neither did Luna, since she gasped and reached out as if to stop him from whatever it was that he was doing, but she was too late. It faded, and the child squeezed his finger again before drooling on his robe and giggling.

"What did you do?" Luna asked carefully, although not accusatory.

Sephtis shook his head. "I don't know."

He did notice, however, that the girl's eyes were now gold. Luna took her daughter back, and the infant reached out for the dark man that had held her so warmly, already looking distressed.

He was feeling urgency, and he knew that it was the Stone, speaking to him as it always did. "I have to go now," he said. "You'll…call me again?"

"Maybe," Luna said. She looked down at Sola. "Wave to Sephtis. Goodbye!"

It might have been his imagination, but the baby did in fact wave her arm. Sephtis smiled and disappeared in his usual fashion, without a sound.

He didn't know how long it was until he heard from her again, and when he did it wasn't an invitation to visit her. It was a whisper, so soft that he almost missed it, and by the time he realized what it meant it was too late.

 _Goodbye, Sephtis._

He knelt where he was, in the wetlands of Central America, and wept.

* * *

Redtooth laughed and swept up the squirming, giggling child at his knees, placing the boy firmly upon his hip as he stepped through the threshold of the small chamber which had been carved into the stone. "Grandpa! Grandpa!" the little one chanted, taking hold of the elderly goblin's beard with one hand and turning his pointed ear with the other. "Papa! Grandpa's here!"

"Why, hello there, cub," Redtooth said, bouncing the child in his arms. "And what were you doing out on the street, then? Causing trouble?"

The little one giggled again, shaking his head. "I visited the statue today!' he exclaimed. "The statue!"

"Ah," Redtooth's smile lost some of its joy, at least until his grand-daughter's daughter rounded the corner from the kitchen and favored him with a wide smile. "There she is! And how are you?"

"Tired," she replied honestly, hugging her great-great-grandfather around her squirming son. "You look grayer than when I last saw you."

Redtooth bared his teeth. "I never thought I'd favor the day when a human king ruled New Sanctum," he replied. "But the tight-asses that sit with me on the council try my patience."

"Grandfather! Language!" the woman admonished, sweeping her son out of his arms. The boy pulled Redtooth's beard in the process, eliciting a soft growl of discomfort.

"Enough, woman!" he barked, even as the boy giggled.

"Tight-ass!" the toddler crowed. "Tight-ass!'

Even the indomitable Redtooth had to cringe under the glare that his descendent gave him then. Raising his hands, he scuffed his feet on the rug and was fortunately saved by the arrival of another bundle of energy.

"Papap! Papap!" the high-pitched voice chanted. "Up!"

Redtooth reached down and collected the youngest of his lineage, who had rushed in ahead of her father. "Longfoot," the elder greeted.

"Redtooth! What a pleasure! Come, come, let us sit."

The family migrated, slowly, to the kitchen, where the children left the adults to their boring talks with disgust. Redtooth watched them go, sighing softly.

"It warms my old heart to see them," he told the parents. "It is the reason why I fought so hard in the war. And after. Well…if only your mother could have seen them."

His daughter smiled sadly. "What brings you out, father?"

"I was feeling old," Redtooth replied, laughing as he leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "It does these bones good to see you well."

"You aren't _that_ old," Longfoot chided, half-serious. "You'll see more grandchildren, I'm sure."

Redtooth rubbed his knees. "Well, I feel old enough. The war…it was short, but it felt long. You couldn't imagine how it felt, in those battles…"

His daughter reached out, touching his curled talons where they rested on the table. "It'll be alright. You've no lasting injuries?"

"None," Redtooth replied. "By magic, I made it out. Couldn't' have fought for a better king. In the end, it all came down to him…"

"Hardyn saw the statue today. The elder took them to teach them about the fall of Sanctum," Longfoot said. "I…you were there, weren't you?"

"Aye," Redtooth answered, darkly. "I was."

"It seems so long ago," Longfoot whispered. "I, well…I've heard it a thousand times. You don't need to talk about it again."

"Like I said," Redtooth replied. "I fought that battle for _you_. For Hardyn. And for every generation thereafter. Now, enough about that. I wanted to share a story with you, about the weeks following that dreadful battle…"

A long, joyful evening with his family, and Redtooth found himself wandering back to his own house in the newly excavated city of New Sanctum with a smile on his face, remembering the good times. Stepping through the door, he laid his coat across a chair and sighed, stretching his arms and feeling the bones pop as he rolled his shoulders.

"These old warrior's joints," he grumbled, scratching his chin behind his beard.

"Not that old," a familiar voice startled the elderly goblin. Redtooth spun on his heel, mouth open, and narrowed his eyes when he saw the tall, gaunt human leaning against his open door.

"You don't look like you've aged a day," the goblin accused, aiming a finger. "Put that hood down, dammit."

Sephtis raised his thin, pale hands and lowered his hood, revealing his expressionless, haunting eyes. His face bore a few wrinkles, but they were shallow, and there was an unnatural vitality to his features that made him seem young. To anyone who didn't know his age, he would have appeared to be in his thirties. His fingers twitched as he stepped into the house. "I hope…you don't mind."

"Course not. Drink?'

"No, thank you," Sephtis replied. "I came…well, I thought I would see how my city was faring…after all this time."

"What do you think?" Sephtis shrugged, ghosting forward silently. His eyes rested on Redtooth's face, on his white hair and deep wrinkles. The goblin waved his scrutiny aside. "Fine, don't answer me."

"It is good," the man replied. "I'd forgotten how long it had been. How many years?"

"One hundred and eighty-six."

"Ah."

Redtooth turned away, trudged to the kitchen, and returned with a drink in his hand. "You sure?" he grumbled, gesturing with the amber liquid. Sephtis shook his head, and Redtooth tossed the drink to the back of his throat. It burned going down, and left a warm tingle in the goblin's fingers. "That's not all you came for. You've never visited me before. Not once. Been busy?" the question wasn't serious; he had heard all about the waves that Sephtis made wherever he went. The immortal popped up somewhere, made international headlines, then disappeared again, much to the frustration of everyone who tried to pin him down.

If Redtooth was bitter about the lack of visitation, it didn't show. Rather, the goblin seemed resigned.

Sephtis sighed. "I'm…moving on."

"Moving on," Redtooth parroted. "Dying?"

"Nay. I cannot die," Sephtis replied. "There are wizards hunting me. They think I am a necromantic construction, an abomination of the sort that I have sought out and destroyed for so long. I intend…to let them catch me."

"Yeah," Redtooth muttered. "And what?"

"They will throw me into the Veil of Death. They know that conventional means will not kill me. They've tried."

The goblin blinked. "You're an idiot. All these ears and you're still just as stupid as you were when you left!" he suddenly exclaimed.

"I came to say goodbye to you, again," Sephtis continued, like Redtooth hadn't spoken. "I…didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Luna, you know."

Redtooth's eye twitched. "Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why are you going to let them kill you?"

Sephtis shrugged. "I cannot die."

"So, you're gonna put that to the test, are you? Is that it?"

"No," Sephtis whispered. "It is…how it must be. I have done what I needed to do. I go now to serve elsewhere."

"You go to die," Redtooth corrected him. "You're deluding yourself if you think anything else."

"Do not try to convince me. The wizards who chase me…they are good men. I would have to kill them to convince them to leave me be, and I will not do that. They do not deserve it. All things are as they should be."

"Then go. Get out of my damn house," Redtooth barked. "If you're going to roll over and die after everything you've done, then do it. Don't stand there, harping on about it. I don't give a damn."

"Goodbye, Redtooth. Live well."

Sephtis was gone before the goblin could open his mouth. Snorting with suppressed rage, he smashed the glass in his fist against the wall and slumped into a chair, rubbing his temples with his elbows resting on his knees.

"Goodbye, Sephtis," he muttered, with an empty laugh. "Goodbye."

A/N: That's the end, folks, but not really. I hope the ending didn't feel too abrupt; I had a lot of ideas on things to go for, but they all started looking more like sequels, so I wrapped things up here. This isn't the end of Sephtis' story, but it probably won't be up continued for a hot minute. I've been cooking up some Star Wars stuff recently. Anyway, thanks to everyone who followed the story to its conclusion. This is my first completed fanfiction, so I'm pretty excited.

All in all, I'm satisfied with how it turned out. I think I could have done better with the beginning, and the ending could probably have used some additional polish, but after working for so long I can't bring myself to be disappointed. Let me know what you think, I greatly appreciate any and all feedback.


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